Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

NEWPORT CORPORATION BILL

Read the Third time and passed.

HUNTINGDON AND PETERBOROUGH COUNTY COUNCIL BILL

SOMERSET COUNTY COUNCIL BILL

Considered; and read the Third time.

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC BUILDING AND WORKS

Portsmouth Dockyard

Mr. Judd: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what is the number and value of contracts so far put out to private firms by his Department in the Portsmouth area during the current financial year; what has been the effect of this private contracting on incentive bonus earnings by men employed by his Department in Portsmouth Naval Dockyard; and whether he will make a statement.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Public Building and Works (Mr. Charles Loughlin): Excluding small individual jobs up to £100 in value; 202 contracts have been placed to a total value of over £3·5 million in the Portsmouth area. The bonus incentive earnings of our own labour force in the dockyard cannot be related to this figure.

Mr. Judd: I thank my hon. Friend for tint reply. Is he aware that there is

deep consternation among the men in his labour force in the Portsmouth area about this trend of Departmental policy? Can he assure them that it is impossible to direct to them more of the work going to private contract as they regard themselves as well equipped to do it?

Mr. Loughlin: The £3·5 million to which I have referred includes Part I work, which the direct labour force does not do. The direct labour force work is in the region of £3·3 million. We are concerned to ensure wherever we are competitive with contractors that our direct labour force will do the job.

Mr. Judd: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what has been the estimated total number of apprentices in the building industry during each of the past five years; what has been the total number of apprentices employed by his Department in Portsmouth Dockyard during the same years; and what are now the long-term employment prospects for these dockyard apprentices.

Mr. Loughlin: Beginning in 1965 totals have been: 27,194, 24,942, 23,722, 25,132 and 21,553. The corresponding figures for Portsmouth Dockyard are: 135, 140, 118, 126 and 106. For those who choose to remain with the Ministry the prospects of long-term employment are good.

Mr. Judd: Again I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Does he share my concern at this downward trend over the years? Does he expect to see the trend being put into reverse? If so, how?

Mr. Loughlin: If my hon. Friend will look at the figures and bear in mind that there is a change from a five-year indenture period to a four-year indenture period, he will see that the percentage is very much the same. So far as concerns our labour force, we want sufficient apprentices, but sufficient and no more.

Construction Industry (North-West Region)

Mr. H. Boardman: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works if he will state the number of closures of building firms in the North-West in the past two years.

Mr. Tilney: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what steps he is taking to counteract unemployment in the construction industry in the North-West.

The Minister of Public Building and Works (Mr. John Silkin): The number of construction firms in the North-West Region which closed in 1968 and 1969 was 809 and 762 respectively. Because of my concern for the construction industry as a whole I have, as I indicated on 10th February, had discussions with all sides of the industry and am considering the situation with my colleagues.

Mr. Boardman: To what extent are those failures due in part to a false scarcity of land brought about by a too rigid green belt policy which in turn brings about a phenomenally high price for land? There is also the effect of S.E.T. to be considered. If the Government want to do something about housing, should they not do something about these two problems?

Mr. Silkin: It is as well to consider this very carefully. The closures were almost entirely concentrated among the small- and very small-size firms, that is, firms with fewer than 25 workers. One has to be very careful because this may well reflect amalgamations and acquisitions as well as genuine closures.

Mr. Tilney: Is the Minister aware that closures have led to an increase of over 4,000 unemployed in the industry in the North-West and many of them will never return to the industry?

Mr. Silkin: I am, of course, very much concerned about unemployment in the construction industry, but generally activity in the construction industry as a whole, apart from house building, in the North-West has been moving fairly satisfactorily. It was, for example, at constant prices 10 per cent. higher in 1969 than in the same period in 1968.

Mr. Heffer: But would my right hon. Friend not agree that the level of unemployment among building workers in the North-West and on Merseyside is far too high? Will he urge the Chancellor to do something positive soon to ensure that credit facilities for builders are eased and other steps taken to realise more work in the building industry?

Mr. Silkin: My hon. Friend knows my concern about the general question of unemployment in the construction industry, and that I have been having discussions with my colleagues.

Mr. Longden: What is wrong with a firm which employs 25 or fewer men?

Mr. Silkin: I do not remember telling the House that there was anything wrong; I was trying to explain what had actually happened and said that there might have been amalgamations and acquisitions, as well as straight closures.

Building Contractors (Registration)

Mr. Boyden: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what progress is being made towards the compulsory registration of builders for all public contracts.

Mr. John Silkin: The desirability of introducing qualitative or other registration schemes for building contractors is currently being examined by the Forbes Inquiry. I cannot anticipate the inquiry's findings.

Mr. Boyden: But since many small builders want this kind of registration, should it not be given a push forward by my right hon. Friend's Department taking some immediate administrative measures?

Mr. Silkin: Of course, the inquiry's main task is to settle once and for all the vexed question of whether any form of qualitative registration system for builders would be worth while. The inquiry, having been set up, should be allowed to proceed as fully and in as workmanlike a manner as possible.

Building Contracts (Payment)

Mr. Boyden: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what is the estimated amount of money owed to British building contractors at any convenient time because of the prevailing practice of clients retaining a percentage of payments due against possible defects.

Mr. John Silkin: Information is not available to enable this amount to be directly measured, but I estimate it to be roughly £30 million for building, and £10 million for civil engineering.

Mr. Boyden: Would not an investigation into this be suitable? Would it not be a good idea to alter the rule so that builders are not so short of credit —of course, in the long term?

Mr. Silkin: That is a long way outside the scope of this Question, which dealt with retention against defects rather than retention in general. Certainly the building industry might consider this matter well worth studying.

Mr. Chichester-Clark: But since the National Joint Council in 1967 found that at any one time there was £500 million outstanding to the building industry and that 20 per cent. of that was retention money, what steps is the right hon. Gentleman taking to goad his colleagues in other Departments into being prompter payers?

Mr. Silkin: Retentions on interim payments—I do not challenge the hon. Gentleman's figures—normally vary between about 3 and 5 per cent. It is not a tremendous amount. I have had no representations from the industry recently, but I have said that this is something which the industry itself, because of its credit position, might consider studying.

Palace of Westminster (St. Stephen's Entrance)

Mr. Ogden: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works if he is satisfied with the cleanliness, illumination and decoration of the St. Stephen's public entrance at the Palace of Westminster, and the vestibule therein; and what proposals he has to improve these.

Mr. Loughlin: No, Sir; but I am arranging for the area to be washed down and for other improvements to be made during this year's Summer Recess. These will include the embellishment of the heraldic ceiling and new lighting.

Mr. Ogden: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Will he confirm that the standards will be at least as excellent as those which his Ministry has maintained in other parts of the Palace of Westminster? Will he bear in mind that this could be done at comparatively small cost, to make an entrance which is really worthy of this Palace and those who come here?

Mr. Loughlin: I thank my hon. Friend for his compliments. It will be a considerable improvement and the cost will not be excessive.

New Houses (Condensation)

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works if he will make a further statement on his work to combat the effects of condensation in new houses, in the light of new evidence sent to him by the hon. Member for West Lothian.

Mr. Loughlin: I have written to my hon. Friend about this.

Mr. Dalyell: Is my hon. Friend aware that many hon. Members are very grateful to him and his Ministry for laying on an excellent presentation in Westminster Hall, and that I am grateful for what they are doing in West Lothian with their film on condensation? Would he assure us that he is concentrating on the work of the Building Research Station at Watford and making sure that it does its bit in facing this terrible problem?

Mr. Loughlin: The Building Research Station has made a great contribution to trying to solve some of the problems of local authorities. We shall have the design guide "Condensation in Dwellings" issued shortly. This will also make a great contribution.

Labour-Only Sub-Contracting

Mr. R. W. Elliott: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works when he will make a statement about his most recent discussions with the building and civil engineering industries on the subject of self-employment in the industries.

Mr. John Wells: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works when he now proposes to introduce legislation to implement the Phelps Brown Report.

Mr. Fernyhough: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works if he will make a statement on his recent talks with the unions and employers in the building and construction engineering industries about labour-only sub-contracting.

Mr. McNamara: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works when he will implement the Phelps Brown proposals for labour-only sub-contracting.

Mr. Arnold Shaw: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works if he will now implement the Phelps Brown proposals for labour-only sub-contracting.

Mr. John Silkin: I intend to introduce a Bill shortly. I outlined the form of the Bill in a written reply to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) on 24th February.—[Vol. 796, c. 309–11.]

Mr. Elliott: Is the Minister aware that his Answer will be received with great enthusiasm by those involved? But could he explain why there has been such a delay, since it is over two years since the Phelps Brown Committee reported?

Mr. Silkin: I can correct the hon. Gentleman. It has been received with considerable enthusiasm by those concerned. The delay—I do not accept that it has been a long delay—is due to the necessity of getting the legislation absolutely right and not merely following blindly in the steps of the report.

Mr. Wells: Has the Minister informed the industry of the details of the Bill's proposals and has he given them an opportunity for consultation?

Mr. Silkin: I have informed the industry of the general proposals, but obviously the first they will know of the actual details is when the Bill is presented to the House.

Mr. McNamara: Is my right hon. Friend aware that we all support him in ensuring that we have not only the Bill but the proper and the right Bill, that we are all looking forward to having it on the Floor of the House and that we want to persuade my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to let us have it here very quickly?

Mr. Silkin: I am grateful. I can assure my hon. Friend that the Bill will be of some satisfaction to him.

Mr. Shaw: Might I suggest to my right hon. Friend that many of us on this side have understood the complications, and therefore the need for some delay, so that the right answers are forthcoming, and that we therefore welcome his announcement?

Mr. Silkin: I am very grateful.

Construction Industry

Mr. Eyre: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works whether he will make a statement on the present state of trade in the construction industry.

Mr. Loughlin: My right hon. Friend has indicated on several recent occasions that we are concerned about the current state of trade in the industry—mainly on the housebuilding side—and he is considering this situation with his colleagues. We have however noticed that some housebuilders are now pointing to an improvement in the position.

Mr. Eyre: Has not the hon. Gentleman's complacency been further shaken since the censure debate by the recent news that construction orders fell in 1969 by 5 per cent. overall, and even worse, that private housing figures fell by 13 per cent.? Has he been to the Chancellor again to demand some relief for this industry?

Mr. Loughlin: The fact that my right hon. Friend earlier today told the House that he is considering this with his colleagues should be a sufficient answer for the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Fernyhough: What kind of response has the Minister of Housing had to his letter, particularly to Tory local housing authorities, which are not doing their job and have cut their council house building?

Mr. Loughlin: I cannot answer for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing, but I think that the figures will tell their own story.

Mr. Speed: While the Minister is considering this problem, is it not a fact that brick stocks are now at record high levels?

Mr. Loughlin: I will not anticipate a later Question on the Paper.

Selective Employment Tax

Mr. Grant: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what is his latest estimate of the addition to construction costs caused by the selective employment tax.

Mr. John Silkin: A little less than 4 per cent.

Mr. Grant: If, as is expected, S.E.T. is raised in the forthcoming Budget to compensate for tax cuts elsewhere, will the Minister be prepared to defend such a decision to the industry which he is supposed to represent, as it pays £155 million a year already?

Mr. Silkin: Hypothetical questions do not even deserve hypothetical answers. Like hon. Members throughout the House, I await with considerable interest the Reddaway Report on the construction industry, especially after the report on the distributive trades.

Mr. Ashton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that after the Selsdon Park conference there was a proposal to introduce a value-added tax on the building industry, which would involve much more than the 3 or 4 per cent. S.E.T. costs the industry?

Mr. Silkin: I had heard something of the sort, and I think that I commented on it in the Supply debate on 26th February.

Mr. Chichester-Clark: Does the Minister agree that one very serious cost resulting from the imposition of S.E.T. on the industry is the grave falling off in the indenturing of apprentices? What will he do to stop the seed corn of the future being eaten in this way?

Mr. Silkin: I agree that a falling off in the number of apprentices is very undesirable. The hon. Gentleman relates it to S.E.T., but I do not entirely agree. When we consider the question of costs, against the figure of a little less than 4 per cent. we must take into account that during the years since S.E.T. was introduced productivity in the industry has risen by an average of 5 per cent. a year.

Green Park

Mr. Worsley: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works when the area in Green Park used for the construction of the Victoria Line will be restored to public use.

Mr. Loughlin: I fully appreciate the loss of amenity but I am afraid no date can yet be fixed.

Mr. Worsley: Does the Minister agree that that is quite intolerable? The new

line has been open for many months, and the park should be given back to the people of London to enjoy.

Mr. Loughlin: The new line may be open, but we want the area for the Fleet line as well. If we tried to increase the amenity value it would cost us £12,000 to take down the hoarding and remove the concrete structure. It would then cost us another £12,000 to put it back. If I had £24,000 to spend, I would rather use it for cleaning public buildings in Whitehall.

Mr. Speed: Do we take it from the hon. Gentleman's reply that this eyesore will remain until the Fleet line is completed?

Mr. Loughlin: I would want notice of that question. We will restore this amenity at the first opportunity. If hon. Gentlemen opposite want to argue that we should not spend public money wrongly, they cannot very well demand the spending of public money in this instance.

Foreign Office Building

Mr. Worsley: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works whether he will arrange for the cleaning of part of the Foreign Office building in order that its architectural merits or otherwise should be more clearly discernible.

Mr. John Silkin: I intend to clean the St. James's Park elevation as soon as funds are available.

Mr. Worsley: I thank the Minister for a more helpful answer than that of his hon. Friend to the previous Question. When does he intend to do this? When it is done, will he give an undertaking that if the public wishes to keep the building he has an open mind?

Mr. Silkin: The future of the Foreign Office is a question which is not likely to come up for some years. With regard to the question, "When?", I said quite explicitly, "As soon as possible".

Parks (Trees)

Mr. Peter M. Jackson: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works whether he will take steps to ensure that all tree work undertaken in parks under his care is in accordance with British Standard 3998: 1966.

Mr. Loughlin: We already do so.

Mr. Jackson: If that is the case, would my hon. Friend explain the outrageous truncation of a splendid stand of black poplars in St. James's Park, where the work is not being undertaken in conformity with British Standard 3998?

Mr. Loughlin: The tree doctoring is done by our labour force or contractors. In each case there is insistence that we abide by the standards. It may well be that the cluster of trees to which my hon. Friend refers has been lopped pretty extensively, but I can assure him that this is prior to felling of the trees, and we have been advised that it is essential that they should be felled.

School Building (Costs)

Mr. John Wells: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what representations he has received from the building industry about the level of cost yardsticks in school building; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Longden: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what estimate he has made of the effect on the state of trade in the building industry of the level of cost yardsticks in school building; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. John Silkin: None, Sir. I would refer the hon. Members to the statement made on 2nd March by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for Education and Science that cost limits for school building projects are being raised by 10 per cent.—[Vol. 797, c. 25.]

Mr. Wells: But as 10 per cent. is not a very great increase and there has been a wage award in the building industry in the meantime, surely the Minister must take note of that award and recompense the industry accordingly?

Mr. Silkin: The increase will mean an additional £17 million being available in 1970–71 and £18 million in 1971–72. I do not regard that as inconsiderable.

Mr. Longden: Costs have risen by 15 per cent. as a result of the recent agreement. What effect has the productivity agreement had on productivity?

Mr. Silkin: I do not think that that arises from the Question. We are only

at the start of the agreement, which covers a period of time, so we shall have to wait a little while to measure the effect. But I am very interested in this.

Mr. Heffer: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the building operatives, both craftsmen and labourers, have been grossly underpaid? Workers in the industry have to work in all sorts of difficult weather and conditions, and even if they were paid £100 a week hon. Members on this side would regard it as a fair payment.

Mr. Silkin: I am aware that my hon. Friend would take that view. My right hon. Friend the First Secretary and I approved the settlement.

System Building

Mr. Michael Shaw: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what estimate he has formed of the capacity at which the system building side of the building industry is now working; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Loughlin: From the information at my disposal, I cannot make such an estimate. At the present moment system building capacity is not fully used. My right hon. Friend is discussing with his colleagues means of improving the situation.

Mr. Shaw: Does not the hon. Gentleman accept that system buildings are now running at about 25 per cent. of their capacity? This is a deplorable state of affairs. What are his right hon. Friends doing to improve the situation?

Mr. Loughlin: I doubt very much whether the figure the hon. Gentleman gave was correct. I think that it is nearer 40 per cent. My Ministry has encouraged the use of industrialised buildings, and that is all we can do. We cannot compel people buying privately or local authorities to accept a particular type of building. I think that my Ministry has encouraged them as far as is possible.

Mr. Chichester-Clark: I think that the figure should be 28 per cent., so my hon. Friend is right in saying that the industry's capacity is not fully used.

Mr. Loughlin: I am not sure that I would even accept the hon. Gentleman's 28 per cent.

Construction Industry (Technical Advisory Service)

Mr. Ford: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what facilities he proposes to introduce to provide an information and advisory service for the construction industry.

Mr. John Silkin: From early May the Building Research Station will offer a technical advisory service including site visits. The service for which fees will be charged will operate from the laboratories at Watford and East Kilbride and from a new centre in Birmingham. A descriptive brochure will be placed in the Library of the House when printed.

Mr. Ford: Is my right hon. Friend aware that that statement will be very well accepted in the industry, which readily acknowledges that improvements in productivity are possible and should be made?

Mr. Silkin: I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. I had to make the choice between a solution of that sort and imposing a levy on the industry. In consultation with my National Consultative Council, I chose this formula.

Maintenance Work (Directly Employed Labour)

Mr. Ford: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works if he has completed his initial survey of the cost to his Department of using directly-employed labour on maintenance work in the United Kingdom in comparison with the cost of using contractors; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Loughlin: A first examination of the costings indicates that our directly employed labour is reasonably competitive with contractors over a fair proportion of the work that they at present undertake. But much remains to be done before the results can be fully assessed.

Mr. Ford: Will my hon. Friend draw these figures to the attention of local authorities, particularly those Tory local authorities which have abolished direct works departments?

Mr. Loughlin: My task at this stage is to get the direct labour force in the

Department completely efficient and competitive with contractors. If we can do this and demonstrate that D.E.L. is an economic proposition, it will then be up to local authorities, whatever their political complexion, to follow suit.

Mr. Orme: We welcome the fact that my hon. Friend wants to create maximum efficiency within the Department, but will he give an assurance that the work of the Department in direct labour will be extended throughout the country, as there is great need for this type of development?

Mr. Loughlin: If we make the Department's direct labour force efficient, as I believe we can, and if we demonstrate that it competes with contractors, as I believe we can, I see no reason why, ultimately, there should not be an expansion of the D.E.L. force.

Construction Projects (Metric Dimensions)

Mr. Ashton: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what is his estimate of the proportion and value of public sector construction projects being designed in metric dimensions; and what is his comparable estimate for the private sector.

Mr. Loughlin: At 31st December, 1969, work to the value of £1,500 million was being designed in metric in the public sector. This is equivalent to 55 per cent. of the work at design stage at that time for that sector. The corresponding figures for the private sector were £41 million and 17 per cent.

Mr. Ashton: Does my hon. Friend realise that this means that public builders are three times more efficient and modern than private enterprise builders? Does he think that this will lead to owner-occupiers finding themselves buying "metric" carpet to put into a brand-new "feet and inches" house?

Mr. Loughlin: My mind boggles at the various computations that could be made. What has happened is that the public sector has taken the initiative at a very early stage, and we are consequently all the time extending into metric. I would urge the private sector to speed up a little in its efforts to go metric.

Mr. Costain: The Parliamentary Secretary laughed at the joke about the carpet, but does he appreciate that the building industry has to design metric buildings on imperial Ordnance sheets? Is that not a more serious matter than carpets?

Mr. Loughlin: It may be that I laughed about the carpet, but I have a sense of humour and I wish that the hon. Gentleman would develop one.

Royal Parks (Pop Concerts)

Mr. Wellbeloved: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works if he has decided to permit the holding of further pop concerts in the Royal Parks this year.

Mr. John Silkin: As the previous concerts in Hyde Park were much enjoyed by many young people, I have decided to allow two more to be held in this park this summer.

Mr. Wellbeloved: Will my right hon. Friend accept the congratulations of the House in sticking to his guns in this matter? It is highly desirable that there should be a balance between the maintenance of proper order in the parks and their use by the citizens of this country.

Mr. Silkin: I do not know about sticking to my guns. If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I think I was rather playing it by ear. My task is to combine the rest and relaxation feature of the parks with their enjoyment by so many people.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Will the right hon. Gentleman ask his hon. Friend whether he proposes to have breathalysers available?

Mr. Silkin: The matter of breathalysers is a question for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and not for my hon. Friend.

Nepal (East-West Highway)

Mr. Wellbeloved: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what progress has been made on that part of the East-West Highway in Nepal being built by his Department on behalf of the Ministry of Overseas Development.

Mr. John Silkin: Of the 75 miles due to be constructed, 30 miles of forest have been cleared and surveyed and

approximately 12 miles are under construction.

Mr. Wellbeloved: Will my right hon. Friend tell the House whether British construction equipment is being used on this project?

Mr. Silkin: It is, in very considerable quantity. The value of British equipment used here is £300,000. Other materials are obtained from either Nepal or India or from the United Kingdom.

Building Workers (Employment)

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works if he will state the number unemployed at the latest available date in the building and housebuilding industries, respectively, as compared with 12 months earlier; and what steps he proposes to revive employment.

Mr. John Silken: Separate information for the building and housebuilding industry is not available. I have, as I indicated on 10th February, had discussions with all sides of the industry and am considering the situation with my colleagues.

Mr. Allaun: Is not it wrong that such a vast number of building workers should be unemployed when there are so many people in housing need? In his talks with his colleagues, to which the Minister has referred, will he press for a relaxation of the credit squeeze, particularly as regards houses?

Mr. Silkin: I agree with my hon. Friend that in human terms it is a bad thing anyway, and in terms of resources, obviously, one needs the houses up and the men working. I am not quite so gloomy as he is. I pointed out on 26th February that a number of factors, including S.A.Y.E. and the building societies, would have their effect, and I notice that this is beginning to be appreciated.

Mr. Chichester-Clark: Although the Minister says that he has not separate figures, are not there grounds for suspicion that about 50,000 workers have disappeared from the house-building side of the industry? Will he say how much of that is due to people going self-employed as the result of S.E.T.?

Mr. Silkin: I think that we are mixing up two questions here. The answer


to the first point is, no, we cannot separate them. The answer to the second point is that the workers would not be unemployed.

Mr. Rose: Will my right hon. Friend say what steps his Department is taking to bring pressure to bear on Conservative local authorities which have slashed their housing programmes?

Mr. Silkin: This is not a matter for me, but for my right hon. Friend.

Sir G. Nabarro: Will the right hon. Gentleman have regard to the statement yesterday of his colleague the Secretary of State for Social Services, that all local authorities are short of money, and will he persuade the Chancellor of the Exchequer to abolish S.E.T. and so put local authorities in funds and enable them to build proportionately more houses and more public works?

Mr. Silkin: I have a great regard for my right hon. Friend, but I am afraid that if I bore him the message which the hon. Gentleman suggests his regard for me would go down considerably.

Mrs. Renée Short: Will my right hon. Friend say what progress has been made in his discussions with his right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government about the setting up of a house-building organisation as recommended by the Estimates Committee?

Mr. Silkin: I do not think this arises out of the Question. I am more concerned with getting houses built and the people back to work.

New Colonial Office Site (Use)

Sir J. Langford-Holt: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works when it was decided that the site opposite Westminster Abbey, at present used as a car park, should not be used as a new Colonial Office; how long it was put to no use at all; and when he expects to reach a decision on its new use in accordance with the Martin Plan of 1965.

Mr. Loughlin: The decision not to use the site for a new Colonial Office was taken in 1958. The site had then already been in use for two years as a car park. A feasibility study is being undertaken into a comprehensive development, which

will include a Government conference centre.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, this site has been vacant for a quarter of a century and, in asking him to take action, one is not rushing him unduly. Will he tell the House when a final decision will be made about the site, and when something will happen?

Mr. Loughlin: I have great affection for the hon. Gentleman—[HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw."]—I will withdraw only at the request of the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Sir J. Langford-Holt). If he is charging me with delay, he must equally charge his colleagues with delay.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Yes.

Mr. Loughlin: All I can tell him in reply to the second part of his supplementary question is that we hope to be able to give definite information in the early spring.

St. James's Park (Illumination)

Mr. Strauss: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works whether he has arranged for illumination of appropriate areas of St. James's Park during the summer months; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. John Silkin: I am examining whether money can be found for some illuminations in St. James's Park in the next financial year.

Mr. Strauss: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the doubt he expresses in his reply is very disturbing, in view of the hope he expressed to me six months ago, in answer to a Question, that this illumination would be undertaken. As the total cost cannot be more than £2,000 or £3,000, it would be deplorable, because of petty reasons of economy, to stop the transformation of the park into something beautiful at night.

Mr. Silkin: It was not economy that I had in mind at that moment. I was thinking that there were a number of birds, feathered and otherwise, who at certain hours might not appreciate illumination.

Dr. Winstanley: Would the right hon. Gentleman arrange to illuminate certain


parts of this building in which the lighting is what is described as restful? In other words, it is very good for going to sleep in, but not so good for doing any work.

Mr. Silkin: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will write to me about that matter.

Construction Industry (North-East Region)

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works whether he will make a further statement on the action he proposes to take to make full use of the resources of the construction industry in the North-East.

Mr. Willey: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what steps he is taking to promote employment in the construction industry in the North-East.

Mr. John Silkin: This is one aspect of a national problem. As I have said on several occasions, I am considering the general situation with my colleagues.

Mr. Blenkinsap: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the extent of the problem that faces us in the North-East, and has he given special consideration to the establishment of a regional building agency which might make effective use of this labour force for public works?

Mr. Silkin: I understand my hon. Friend's anxiety, but the fact is that, apart from house building, the level of public sector construction activity in the Northern region is already very high. New orders obtained by contractors at constant prices in the first nine months of last year total £52 million, which, as a matter of interest, compared with £35 million in the equivalent period in 1964.

Mr. Willey: But is my right hon. Friend aware of the disastrous effect of the savage cut-back in the house-building programme in Sunderland on the unemployment rates? Will he consult with his right hon. Friend to see that this is not continued but that the house-building programme can be made commensurate with the needs of Sunderland?

Mr. Silkin: My right hon. Friend is well aware of this problem and of the reasons for it.

New Houses and Flats (Dampness)

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works if he will undertake a survey of new houses and flats where serious dampness has arisen; and if he will introduce legislation to make the building firms concerned financially responsible for subsequent insulation or correction.

Mr. Loughlin: I wish to apologise for the length of the reply.
The Department has carried out a number of surveys to establish the causes of dampness in new houses and flats and I do not consider that further surveys would provide any new information on this subject. The surveys have shown that the causes of dampness are often complex involving questions of design, construction and the way occupants use their house or flat. In the circumstances a greater awareness of the technical and social factors is likely to prove more beneficial than additional legislation.

Mr. Allaun: After all this trouble, is it not culpable that the designs of many new houses which are being constructed at the moment are still causing serious and avoidable condensation? Will the Minister consider making a requirement to see that available knowledge on this subject is utilised?

Mr. Loughlin: We are trying to examine the precise causes. There is some doubt whether the usage of the house is not a greater contributory factor than some of the design faults. I mentioned in an earlier reply that the new design guide will be out shortly. I will send a copy to my hon. Friend.

Building Industry (Output)

Mr. Costain: asked the Minister of Public Building and Works what estimate he has now formed of the level of activity in the building industry during the next 12 months.

Mr. John Silkin: I expect that in real terms output of new work in 1970 will be little different from that in 1969.

Mr. Costain: Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that his predecessor, the present Chief Whip, prophesied


an increase of 5 per cent. Why cannot he keep up his predecessor's record on this matter?

Mr. Silkin: I am concerned with the Question asked by the hon. Gentleman today. If he wishes to ask me another Question, he might care to put it on the Order Paper.

PRESIDENT POMPIDOU(MEETING)

Mr. Henig: asked the Prime Minister what plans he now has to meet President Pompidou.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): I hope that an opportunity will occur before too long, but there are no plans for such a meeting at present, Sir.

Mr. Henig: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his answer will give some disappointment since President Pompidou has now been in office for 12 months and many of us cannot understand what has happened to prevent such a meeting? Would my right hon. Friend not agree that the key to the success of his whole European strategy will depend on some broad agreement between this country and France?

The Prime Minister: Not for a period of 12 months, as my hon. Friend suggests. So far as European negotiations are concerned, our own negotiations would be with the Six and not with one individual country. I am glad to tell my hon. Friend that over the past year relations between this country and France, which had not been as good as any of us would have wanted right from the veto in 1963, have substantially improved on all fronts, including bilateral relations.

Mr. Heath: Could the Prime Minister say what is the position about the supply of arms to Libya? Is there a co-ordinated policy between the French Government and Her Majesty's Government, or does Her Majesty's Government accept that France is now the main supplier of arms to Libya? What is the precise position about British arms supplies?

The Prime Minister: There is no coordinated policy between ourselves and the French in this matter. But, as the right hon. Gentleman is aware, we had a

recent visit by the French Foreign Minister —the right hon. Gentleman may have met him on that occasion—and these matters are discussed. Our policy with regard to general arms control for the whole area has been put by us to France and to our other partners in the four-Power talks.

EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY

Mr. David Howell: asked the Prime Minister what interdepartmental studies are being initiated by the Civil Service Department with a view to assessing the demands which will be placed on the country's administration in the event of Great Britain's membership of the European Economic Community.

The Prime Minister: This matter is kept under continuing review by the Civil Service Department, in consultation with the other Departments concerned.

Mr. Howell: Does this continuing review include organising consultations between the Treasury and the Ministry of Agriculture about going over to an agricultural levying system which, as the Prime Minister knows, is a precondition for negotiating on the Treaty of Rome?

The Prime Minister: That matter is dealt with in the White Paper. Where I have had differences with right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite is in relation to their mad desire to do this whether or not we go into the Common Market.

Mr. Heffer: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there are many hon. Members on this side of the House who up to now have been ardent advocates of entry into the Common Market, but who, if it means accepting the agricultural system of the Six as it stands, without any modification, could not possibly accept entry into the E.E.C. on those terms?

The Prime Minister: The countries of the Six are continually looking at their own system, and it is impossible at this stage to forecast what level of prices or of surpluses there would be within the Six by the time British entry became effective. Most of us in the debate in the House, whatever view we took on the general issue or on the White Paper, felt that the question of British entry must


depend on the terms which emerged from the negotiations, including—and most of us thought that this was the single, most important question—the question of the agricultural financing arrangements.

INDUSTRY (DEPARTMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY)

Mr. Blaker: asked the Prime Minister whether he will make one Department responsible for both the manufacturing and service sectors of industry.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir.

Mr. Blaker: Is the Prime Minister aware that Professor Reddaway's report on the distributive trades suggests that S.E.T. has increased productivity by putting people out of work? If this is a good idea, how is it that the Government also have something called the R.E.P. the effect of which is calculated to be precisely the opposite?

The Prime Minister: The R.E.P., of course, refers to development areas and has played a very big part in the improvement of the situation with regard to getting new factories started in development areas. On the general question raised by the hon. Gentleman, I have always felt that there is a very strong case for what he suggests—I am talking about his main Question. It was seriously considered before the changes in the machinery of Government were announced in the House last October. But, on balance, I fell that, however desirable in theory, it would not make for better working of the administrative machine. We have now most industries in one Department and the services for industry and responsibility for most of the invisible services in the Board of Trade.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Might not one of the advantages of my hon. Friend's proposal be to end the discrimination against the service industries, which contribute so much to our balance of payments, as a result of the operation of S.E.T.?

The Prime Minister: This is a matter which has been debated when the House has been considering Finance Bills and, of course, I cannot anticipate the Budget Statement. We are always hearing from

the right hon. Gentleman about discrimination against services. He will be glad to have seen from the figures published yesterday that our invisible services, even after allowing for overseas military expenditure and the rest, improved their tally from £126 million in 1964 to £524 million in 1969.

LUXEMBOURG (VISIT)

Mr. Gwynfor Evans: asked the Prime Minister when he next proposes to pay a visit to Luxembourg.

The Prime Minister: I have no plans to do so at present, but my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will visit Luxembourg on 12th, 13th March.

Mr. Evans: Will the Prime Minister seek to ask the Prime Minister of Luxembourg to enlighten him about the immense advantages even to a very small country of self-government and a voice of its own in the Common Market? Will he then reconsider his Victorian attitude to self-government for Wales and Scotland?

The Prime Minister: Luxembourg was able to enter the Common Market with a viable economy because of her enormous strength from coal and from steel, whereas the hon. Gentleman will be aware that the strength of Wales for very many years past and quite a few years to come will depend on all the massive help that can be developed as a result of being treated as part of a much broader economic unit, namely, Great Britain.

VALUE-ADDED TAX

Mr. Marks: asked the Prime Minister if he will recommend the appointment of a Royal Commission on Taxation, with special reference to tax on added value.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir.

Mr. Marks: Will my right hon. Friend institute a limited inquiry to assess the comparative effects on prices of S.E.T. and the value-added tax which the Conservatives would introduce? Will he also investigate those wholesalers and retailers who put substantial increases on prices and blamed S.E.T.?

The Prime Minister: Like the rest of the House, I have some difficulty in knowing what Conservative policy would be in this matter. They seem increasingly coy about a V.A.T. Dealing with these matters with the facts available to him, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer challenged them about the very wide range of goods on which they had said up to that time price increases of 4s. in the £ would be involved—children's clothes, coal, coke, electricity, gas, rail and bus fares, and his estimate of the number of civil servants. We have not had a reply from right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite to the question put by my right hon. Friend and repeated by me a fortnight ago.

Mr. Thorpe: Does the Prime Minister not agree that it is a profundly bad system to introduce a new tax and then, a year later, ask a professor to take two years reporting on how it is working? Without derogating from the right and duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make up his own mind on taxation, would it not be a good idea to have a Select Committee continuously reviewing cur archaic tax laws?

The Prime Minister: We have abundant facilities for debating these matters here. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman's strictures directed to this side of the House might have been applied in relation to an Opposition who announced that they would introduce a V.A.T. and set another professor to work for two years to prove that they could not.

CS GAS

Mr. Winnick: asked the Prime Minister how many letters he has received on the Government's present policy on CS Gas.

The Prime Minister: About twenty, Sir.

Mr. Winnick: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the considerable and serious concern about the Government's decision to exclude CS gas from the Geneva Protocol? Is it not a matter where the Government should look at the position again, and have not countries like Canada expressed their disapproval of the Government's decision?

The Prime Minister: I have referred to this matter in the past at Question Time. We have looked at it many times having regard to the kind of arguments put forward by my hon. Friend. As I have explained, and as my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has explained to the House, the situation is that, when the 1930 decisions were taken about the protocol, CS gas had not then been developed. It is of a different character in its effects from all those known and contemplated in 1930.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Is my right hon. Friend aware that it would be possible under the Geneva Protocol to keep CS gas for internal security if it was already excluded from use in war? There is a real distinction between the two situations, since in one case the use of the gas might escalate to the use of more dangerous weapons, whereas in internal security that is quite impossible.

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to internal security. While everyone in the House was concerned when CS gas was used and about the circumstances in which it was used in Northern Ireland, when it was used, under proper control, it was because the only alternative in a heavily built up urban area would have been to use bullets—[HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] I am sorry. My hon. Friends know that the job of the British troops in the matter of keeping—[Interruption.] I am referring to when it was used under proper control by British troops. My hon. Friends will know the job that they had in keeping order on one or two particularly difficult nights. If the horrible decision to use CS gas had not been taken, the even more horrible alternative would have been that of protecting British solders' lives with bullets. Faced with that choice of evils, I think that most hon. Members would have chosen the one which was chosen by the British forces.

Mrs. Ewing: Has the Government's decision to redefine gas as smoke anything to do with a desire to please the United States Government?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. That had nothing to do with any decision which was taken. It was a separate decision which we took. As I said, it is used


very sparingly and under control in internal situations where the alternative is to do something worse and something more lasting, because there is no recovery from bullets—

Sir G. Nabarro: It depends where they hit.

The Prime Minister: So far as its use in war is concerned, again different hon. Members could form different views as to its effects. One can imagine a lot of situations in modern military warfare where it could lead to less loss of life than if it were not available.

Mr. MacDermot: In view of the widespread disagreement about the Government's view of their obligation, and as a matter of international law, will my right hon. Friend consider referring the matter for an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice and agree to abide by the decision of the court?

The Prime Minister: We took our decision in the light of the available advice on the legal matters involved. I know that there are certain difficulties in interpretation, partly due to the fact that, unaccountably, in the English and French texts the Geneva Protocol itself uses different words, though both texts are authentic. I do not think that we would gain anything in these difficult problems by asking for a further legal opinion.

Mr. MacMaster: Is The Prime Minister aware that he is exaggerating in a very unfortunate manner when he suggests that the alternative in Northern Ireland was to use bullets? Is he further aware that on the occasion of a Sunday afternoon church parade in my constituency, CS gas was used when there was no question of a need for bullets and indeed when there was no question of any breach of the peace?

The Prime Minister: I cannot comment on individual incidents in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. Many of the matters which caused concern last year are being investigated by the Scarman Tribunal, and I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman will see to it that evidence is given about the case that he has in mind. I am sure that the hon.

Gentleman will not deny that there were some really ugly incidents. I will not say from which side they came, because there were extremists of more than one persuasion involved. At various times, there were very ugly incidents where British troops, in order to keep law and order and in order to preserve their own lives, would have had to use weapons. Instead, because they had CS gas, they used it. No one likes the thought of using CS gas in Northern Ireland or anywhere else. But if it is a choice between that and weapons, which would be the alternative, I think that most hon. Members would choose the gas.

Mr. Philip Noel-Baker: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I took part in the discussions on the Geneva Protocol in 1930 and that there is, in my view, absolutely no doubt whatever that the view of Mr. Arthur Henderson and Lord Robert Cecil, which was unanimously accepted by the Disarmament Conference, forbids the use of any such gas as CS in time of war?
Is my right hon. Friend further aware that a great authority in the United States has said that the other gases, the herbicides and defoliants, have done long-term damage to Vietnam agriculture and that they have destroyed the forests perhaps for ever?

The Prime Minister: The subject of the second part of my right hon. Friend's question has been debated a number of times. It is a separate question from the one on the Order Paper, whether in the context of Vietnam or in the broader context of defoliants and similar preparations. On the first part of my right hon. Friend's question, everyone knows of the authority with which he speaks on these matters and his long experience and distinguished contribution to disarmament in those years. Our conclusion took into account everything said in those discussions. But I think that my right hon. Friend will recognise that discoveries, such as CS gas, were not known to exist in this form at the time that these decisions were taken. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that in all matters of disarmament the good is sometimes the enemy of the best, and that is the alternative we are facing here.

QUESTIONS TO THE PRIME MINISTER

Mr. Ogden: On a point of order. May I draw attention to Question No. Q7, in my name, and to other Questions tabled for The Prime Minister about three weeks ago? A great many supplementary questions are asked at Question Time by hon. Members who do not take the trouble to put their Questions on the Order Paper. It seems that we can discuss matters like Vietnam, but not the Merseyside and other development areas. May I ask that note be taken of this point?

Mr. Speaker: The Chair is not without sympathy, as the hon. Gentleman knows, first, for hon. Members who wish to put supplementary questions and, secondly, and especially, for those who have taken the trouble to think out Questions and put them on the Order Paper. I do what I can.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (SUPPLY)

Ordered,
That this day Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before Ten o'clock.—[The Prime Minister.]

AMENDMENT OF ELECTRICITY DEPOSIT CHARGES

3.32 p.m.

Mr. Keith Speed: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the powers of electricity supplying authorities to demand deposits from consumers and to amend the rate of interest on those deposits.
Under the Electric Lighting (Clauses) Act, 1899, now 71 years old, electricity undertakings have the right to demand security from consumers. That security may take the form of a cash deposit. All boards, I believe, carry out this practice, although my experiences have been with the Midlands Electricity Board.
I asked the Minister of Technology, in a Question some months ago, whether the Government had any intention of amending or changing the 1899 Act. I was told, quite briefly, that they had no such intention.
In practice, when the board seeks a deposit from consumers, it does so in two circumstances. First, it can seek a cash deposit from a would-be consumer who applies for an electricity supply where the Board suspects or doubts the financial risk involved. Although the electricity boards deny this, I have evidence to the effect that would-be consumers going into certain types of property, particularly rented flats and apartments, are particularly hard hit by boards which almost invariably seem to demand a deposit.
The way that the boards work out the cash deposit required is to estimate one and a half times the heaviest quarter's bill for the new consumer. The consumer may then have to pay a deposit of anything from £50 to £70.
The second circumstance when boards may demand deposits is where consumers have been slow in settling their accounts. Again, in that situation one and a half times the heaviest quarter's account is normally sought. If agreement on the sum asked by the board from the consumer cannot be reached, the 1899 Act allows this sum to be determined and fixed by a magistrates' court.
It is interesting to note that these sums, which can amount to £50, £100, or even more, carry a rate of interest of 4 per cent. per annum, which is taxable, so


there is a net return of 2½ per cent. on these sums which consumers have to deposit with the boards. I shall come to this point later.
I have had considerable correspondence —I know that other hon. Members have, too—with the electricity boards. As far as I can see, the boards try to operate these provisions in a fair and humane way. But no doubt mistakes can and do occur. We are all human, and many officers of the boards are involved in carrying out these policy decisions.
I know from experience—I believe that other hon. Members have similar experience—that much anxiety, doubt, worry and hardship can be caused by this deposit scheme being levied on would-be or existing consumers. I have heard from the director of a company in Birmingham which owns 53 furnished lettings that on occasions new tenants coming in who ask for a supply of electricity have had to wait up to 12 months before connection because they have not been able to find the considerable sum demanded as deposit.
I do not query the deposit scheme as such. Public money is involved, and, clearly, the electricity boards must have a fall-back position. But my Bill would safeguard that position and retain the deposit scheme, but would amend the 1899 Act in three specific and humane ways.
First, it would clearly establish that if a new consumer could show satisfactory evidence of having paid his accounts promptly to any previous electricity board or gas undertaking, or if he could give a bank reference or name a guarantor living in any part of the United Kingdom, the deposit would not be required from him by the board.
Secondly, a consumer who has difficulty in paying his accounts would not be asked for a deposit until he had had the opportunity of discussing the matter with an officer of the board and trying to make mutually satisfactory arrangements for clearing up any outstanding debts that he may have with the board. This discussion could take place either at the board's offices or in the consumer's home.
Thirdly, where a deposit is nevertheless imposed, a consumer should be told in writing of his right to go to a magistrates' court if he disagrees with the sum that the board is asking for deposit—in other words, if there is any dispute over the figure demanded.
Finally, the interest paid by the board on such deposits should be the current Bank Rate, not 4 per cent. I see no reason, where money is demanded from existing or would-be consumers, why they should lend to industries, whether nationalised or private, considerable sums at an artificially low rate of interest.
This will be a modest Bill, but I believe that it could relieve much anxiety and hardship to ordinary men and women and will bring into law formally the professions of good faith by the electricity boards. Therefore, I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Speed, Mr. Eyre, Mr. Fry, Mr. Walden, and Mr. Donald Williams.

AMENDMENT OF ELECTRICITY DEPOSIT CHARGES

Bill to amend the powers of electricity supplying authorities to demand deposits from consumers and to amend the rate of interest on those deposits, presented accordingly, and read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 8th May, and to be printed. [Bill 119.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[16TH ALLOTTED DAY],—considered.

Orders of the Day — BEAGLE AIRCRAFT COMPANY

3.39 p.m.

Mr. F. V. Corfield: I beg to move,
That this House regrets the mishandling by Her Majesty's Government of the Beagle Aircraft Company.
I stress at the outset that, from the Opposition's point of view, this is not yet another debate on the merits or demerits of nationalisation. Our concern is the loss of a very substantial sum of public money resulting from what appears, from an examination of the facts, to have been the mishandling of this affair in which the House, from the start, has been completely and, at times, misleadingly informed. According to the Minister of Technology, in his statement on 2nd December, the sum of money involved was £6 million, which I estimate will be increased by about £1¼ million by his very welcome decision to accept liability for Beagle's creditors.
I remind the House that the Beagle Aircraft Company was created in 1960 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pressed Steel Fisher Limited and was based on the amalgamation of the old Auster and Miles Aircraft Companies. By 1966, negotiations which culminated in the take-over of Pressed Steel by the British Motor Corporation were under way, and Pressed Steel had indicated to the Government that they wished to withdraw from the light aircraft industry. According to a subsequent Ministerial statement, it was then that the then Minister of Aviation, the present Minister of Transport, made inquiries about the possibility of participation by other commercial concerns but without success.
It is relevant to remind the House that at that time the established aircraft manufacturers were still very much in the process of trying to adjust themselves to the situation which had been created by the Government by their drastic cancellation of military projects—TSR2, P1154 and the HS681. Far from being over-

stretched at that time, they were particularly active in searching for and evaluating alternative projects. Hawker Siddeley, for example, was already in the executive aircraft field with the HS125 and Handley Page with the Jetstream. Britten-Norman was developing the Islander and the Government-owned factory at Short Brothers and Harland had already moved away from the highly-sophisticated airline field to the much less sophisticated Skyvan.
It is, therefore, quite untrue to say that none of the established aircraft manufacturers had the capacity to undertake light aircraft production in the same category as the Beagle 206, which was the only aircraft actually in production with the Beagle company at the time—it was a seven to eight seater twin-engined aircraft—or that none of the established manufacturers was interested in this type of market. But it is against this background, in which these manufacturers evaluated Beagle and found it wanting, that the Government decided that they would, nevertheless, purchase the Beagle Aircraft Company.
The Government agreed purchase at a price of £1 million subject as soon as the necessary enabling legislation could be passed and, in the meantime, they agreed to meet the company's full liabilities, and that proposition was announced to the House on 12th December, 1966. The enabling legislation did not appear until we had the Industrial Expansion Bill, the Second Reading of which was on 1st February, 1968. During the intervening period—that is, up to 31st March, 1968— the Government had advanced £2·5 million under the powers of Section 1 of the Civil Aviation Act—the Section which enables the Government to give launching aid for civil aircraft.
To use those powers for this purpose undoubtedly represented a significant extension of the purposes for which they had previously been regarded as apropriate. First, there was no doubt that the purchase money for this company would be paid whether or not parliamentary approval for the enabling legislation was given. It would be used to purchase a company. Secondly, it is worth noting that the justification for these powers and duties which is normally regarded as arising from the special characteristics of the aircraft industry, with which we are all familiar, does not at first sight apply to


the manufacture of light aircraft such as Beagle.
Those characteristics can be summarised very quickly by referring to the high cost of developing sophisticated civil aircraft and the very long time scale required for development which, in turn, involves a prolonged period between initial expenditure and the return, and peculiar difficulties in forecasting markets such a very long time ahead. But neither the cost of developing a light aircraft nor the time lag between initial expenditure and return begins to be in this class. On the contrary, both are of a nature that is well within the experience and requirements of a very large part of modern British industry. This is an important point.
We on this side of the House fully accept and support the need for Government subvention of sophisticated products of the aerospace industry. We also accept that in such projects the risk and forecasting difficulties are such that from time to time some of these projects will have to be abandoned. I would go so far as to say that if one attempts to insure 100 per cent. against failure one will almost certainly insure against success. But neither the Beagle Aircraft Company as a whole, nor any of the aircraft with which it was concerned, falls into this category. That must be borne in mind.
I remind the Minister, if he needs reminding, of the very considerable efforts made by my hon. Friends during the Committee stage of the Industrial Expansion Bill to elicit from the Government sufficient information on which to form a judgment on the commercial wisdom of their decision. If one reads the discussion on Clause 11 on 14th March, one is struck by the unnecessary acrimony with which our efforts were received by the Government. They were not only perfectly legitimate efforts, but necessary efforts, if my hon. Friends and the Committee as a whole were to carry out their duties.
Suffice it to say that the Minister eventually produced a statement which gave much of the relevant financial information. The statement is dated April, 1968. From an earlier Answer to a Question, it appears that up to 1st July, 1966, Beagle's total losses were in the region of £2 million, mostly associated with the

B206, and exclusive of subventions by the parent company totalling £1,135,000. It appears from the statement of April, 1968, that between that date and 31st December, 1967, further losses were incurred amounting to £1,597,000. Therefore, by the time that the Government were in a position to purchase, £4·7 million had already been spent in developing this one aircraft, and designing another.
The Government paid £1·1 million—purchase price plus interest—and made good the losses incurred between August, 1966, and March, 1968, to the tune of £2·5 million, and they estimated—I refer to paragraph 3 of the statement—that a further £2 million would be required to break even by 1972 with eventual annual sales at that time of between £5 million and £6 million. In the event, however, it is clear from the Minister's statement of 2nd December that a further capital injection of no less than £6 million would have been required to achieve a break-even point by 1975—in other words, three years later than the original estimate.
That represents a really mammoth miscalculation, a miscalculation based on a period of only 18 months, from April, 1968, to 2nd December, 1969. It is no use the right hon. Gentleman or his noble Friend in another place defending this miscalculation by implying that the Government were then faced, for the first time, with the alleged need to develop and introduce a wider product range, including new designs of twin-engine aircraft, for it is abundantly clear from the proceedings in Committee that this was envisaged from the outset. In Committee, my hon. Friends were told time and again that it was the great merit of this proposal that Beagle was a company—indeed was apparently the only company —in a position to produce this range.
I doubt the validity of this theory that one must have a range. Considering the history of most light aircraft companies, it is clear that they first developed an extremely successful aircraft, from which evolved a family of aircraft at a later stage; that is, after the first had proved profitable. If one wants a modern example of this, one need only consider the HS125. However, that was the theory put forward at the time and it is no good the Government now saying. "We want another £6 million to do what we said we intended to do and estimated that


it would take £2 million to do only 18 months before".
It is hardly necessary for me to remind the House that the Minister and his predecessors head a great Department which has enormous expertise in these matters. These people are, after all, monitoring, financially and technically, such immensely technical projects as the Concorde, the M.R.C.A. and the development of the RB211 in various forms. It is their duty—and I have no doubt that they have the expertise to do this—to evaluate such propositions as are put before them, such as the 311, the 300 airbus and other projects which various aircraft companies put to them.
It is absolutely inconceivable—indeed, it is unfair to the right hon. Gentleman's Civil Service advisers even to conceive, to suppose—that they are likely to make such a very grave miscalculation. Does the Minister really intend to say that in making his financial calculations he acted on their advice? Will he suggest that his great Department, with its vast expertise in engineering and financial control and with its enormous responsibility for hundreds of millions of pounds of the taxpayers' money, could not do better than a 300 per cent. error in what, by any standards, must have been the simplest project, both financially and engineering-wise, they could ever have handled, in those terms as well as in terms of the time-scale involved?
Is it not much nearer the truth to say that advice was received by the right hon. Gentleman, that £2 million was nothing like enough money to forward this project and that he took it upon himself to over-rule that advice? Certainly, he was clearly warned by my hon. Friends. He was also clearly warned by a number of people outside the House. I have with me a copy of a letter which was written to him by the son of the founder of the Auster Aircraft Company, to which the right hon. Gentleman replied with complete assurances that he was satisfied that this was the soundest possible investment.
There was also at the time a letter in Flight, expressing grave doubts whether the selling price in relation to the cost could ever yield a profit, on the ground that the selling price had throughout been substantially lower than the cost, and

that even if taking into account all the advantages of the learning curve, to make a profit equivalent to the sort of profit made by light aircraft companies in America, of between 11 and 12 per cent., a production line of 1,200 aircraft would be required, representing a period of 30 years at the then contemplated rate of production. But, again, the Minister ignored those warnings.
Are we really to believe that this further requirement for £6 million just came as a bolt from the blue in late November of last year? It certainly appears that the Government's decision not to accept further financing of Beagle came as a bolt from the blue to the company; that is, unless the company was behaving very dishonestly indeed, which I cannot believe it was, since it was accepting equipment to a considerable value to within a day of the receiver being appointed.
It is also relevant to ask what degree of supervision, both monetary and technical, over the company's affairs was assumed by the right hon. Gentleman's representatives. In 1966, when the initial decision was made, we were clearly told that the public's investment in Beagle would be safeguarded by a Government representative as financial director. Later, when the Government purchased, we were told in Committee that there would be three Government-appointed directors, giving the Government a majority on the board.
In the statement of April, 1965, it was stated, in paragraph 3:
On the enactment of the necessary legislation the purchase will be completed and a new Beagle company set up; the Government's interest will then be represented by shares in the new company. Further payments to the company by the Government beyond the vesting date will be taken out in the form of further issues from authorised share capital.
I referred to the articles of association of this company. The first thing one notices, on turning to "capital" on page 13, is that the authorised capital was only £1 million; so that from the outset there was no possibility of issuing shares to the tune of the £3·1 million envisaged in the statement to the House. In fact, from what I can make out, only two shares were ever issued, and those presumably to two nominees of the right hon. Gentleman, members of the Ministry of Technology. As far as I am aware, no further shares were issued.
The whole of the financing of this company was done by a series of increased borrowing powers which related to the borrowing power articles of the articles of association, which lay down that any sum over £100,000 is not to be borrowed without the consent of the Ministry of Technology. There is pinned to the Library copy of the articles of association a series of borrowing power permissions, so to speak, gradually raising the total borrowed to £1·6 million just before the collapse.
It is abundantly clear that each application to borrow had to be made to the Ministry, and was presumably vetted by the Ministry and subject to some inquiry, as to the reason the money was required, by that Department. It therefore cannot be argued now that the Ministry was unaware of the financial development of this company or of the difficulties with which it might be faced.
If one looks at the various Questions that have been asked on the subject in the House, one finds some interesting Answers. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) asked about the monthly internal financial reports, a copy of one of which I have with me. The Answer was to the effect that those reports were made available to the Ministry, but that they were not made the subject of any discussion. Why not? Is it now the proposition that if information comes into the hands of people with this responsibility, and they do not bother to look at it, they are thereby relieved of responsibility? That is a new doctrine and it is a very different one from the one which the Minister applies to directors of private companies.
The question of loan and share capital is extremely relevant to the position of the creditors. Unless it was made quite clear that all this loan capital was to be deferred from the point of view of the creditors, it is clear that the Minister's original intention, declared in the House, was to leave the creditors to what they could get from the receiver. That would have ensured that they got absolutely nothing because the receiver would have been swamped by the size of the Government's loans, despite the fact that parliamentary approval was given on the understanding that it would be done in the form of shares.
So we have a situation in which, much as we welcome the Minister's change of heart, we ought to look for just a moment at the sort of situation which arose when he had his first reaction, in which he said, "No Government support for the creditors". I have a number of letters—a very large number—from creditors from which it is abundantly clear that they relied, and were encouraged to rely, on the fact that this company was owned by Her Majesty's Government.

The Minister of Technology (Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn): I think that the hon. Gentleman has inadvertently made a mistake, because he will not find a statement made by me that there would be no settlement of the creditors' claims.

Mr. Corfield: With respect to the right hon. Gentleman, we did press him on that in the debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill and he was singularly uncommunicative about the creditors. I will check it up and if I have misjudged the right hon. Gentleman I certainly withdraw.
But however that may be, I have letters which show that the creditors were clearly encouraged to believe that they could rely on the Government. One letter in particular is interesting, and it comes from a company supplying jigs and tools. A bill was run up to the tune of about £7,000 and the company was so concerned about this that it issued a writ. It was then contacted by Beagle's financial director or accountant, and asked whether it would withdraw the writ if £3,000 could be paid at once and the balance as soon as the Government's next instalment was forthcoming.
The company did this and supplied a further £2,000 to £3,000 worth of jigs and tools a day before the receiver was appointed. So there is no doubt that there is a very strong case. As I say, we welcome the right hon. Gentleman's decision even if I am inaccurate in saying that it is a reversal of a previous decision. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will tell us what additional loss to public funds this decision involves, because my calculations show that it will be at least another £1¼ million.
There are a number of other matters which need touching upon, although I hope that my hon. Friends will have a


chance to deploy them further than I can. First, coming back to the Consolidated Fund Bill debate, we were there largely concerned with the position of the employees, because my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South-West (Mr. Tom Boardman) tells me that about £58,000 is owing to the employees' pension fund. This, I gather, was approved—or at least there was an agreement with the trustees of the fund.
But did the Government know this? Did they know that the money was, in effect, being borrowed by the pension fund; and if they did—and they certainly had means of knowing—did they approve it, because it surely is very reprehensible financing at the best of times to borrow from the pension fund. This was done, certainly as far as I know, without any attempt to obtain the consent or agreement of those who were most interested in that fund.
Again, I should like the right hon. Gentleman to tell us what conclusions really were made in his Department to check the viability of the proposed rate of production and the estimated decrease in cost as the learning curve proceeded and to see if this was in any way realistic.
We also have a curious situation in which £131,000 of Government money or thereabouts was spent on putting up a building on land which the company did not own. It had a lease which ran out in August, 1969, and the building was completed only a matter of months before that. As I understand, no attempt was made to obtain a renewal of the lease. I appreciate that while the company remained the legal tenant it had certain rights to carry over under the Landlord and Tenant Act, but as soon as it went into liquidation and became Beagle (1969) that was an asset which went through the window and it was Government money which was completely lost and presented on a plate to three or four corporations.
Whether we should rejoice that it has gone from one public pocket to another, I do not know. But it is a loss and is a present to local authorities which they do not particularly want because its function was concerned with the building of aircraft.

Mr. Tom Boardman: It may be helpful for my hon. Friend to know that the statement of affairs put the total value of all the leasehold property of the company at £25,000.

Mr. Corfield: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because I understand that the other factory is leasehold, too, but that the lease has rather longer to go.
Then there is the disturbing question of the Swedish contract—an order by the Swedish Air Force for, I believe, 58 Bulldogs in the first place and an option on a further 45, with a lump sum down of no less than £250,000 for which, of course, there is nothing at all represented in the assets. It so happens that the Swedish Government, with a shrewdness which is commendable, but, nevertheless, does not reflect very much faith in the integrity of our own Government, took the precaution of getting a guarantee from Barclay's Bank. But I cannot think that this sort of transaction can appeal to any hon. Member as likely to improve relations with our Swedish allies in E.F.T.A., or improve the reputation of British business and of the British aircraft industry in particular, abroad.
This is particularly so when this is allied to the problem which is still unsolved, of the large number of aircraft which have been sold and for which no spares and no maintenance facilities have been arranged for the future. If the right hon. Gentleman or any other hon. Member thinks that this is likely to enhance the reputation of the industries of this country, or to increase our export trade, which was the basis of this whole sorry affair, they really want to see a good man and that their National Health cards are paid up.
This is a sorry affair. Although there are aspects other than the loss of this very substantial sum of money, and although the right hon. Gentleman, by his various letters and statements, has assumed personal responsibility, I have to express some sympathy with him because I have no doubt that what happened was that when he went to the Treasury he was told, "If you want £6 million you cannot have it for both this and Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. Where are the most votes for the Labour Party?".
But be that as it may, this is a very unsatisfactory state of affairs. Whether it be the right hon. Gentleman's own fault or the fault of his colleague in the Treasury, I think that the Government have mishandled this affair in a way which is really deplorable. There has been no word of regret, no word of explanation —merely a statement that it was worth while doing it to try to save the light aircraft industry. It is not worth while doing these things unless they are conceived and managed with a degree of commercial and financial acumen which was wholly lacking and, in this case, lacking to the point of negligence.

4.8 p.m.

The Minister of Technology (Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn): I very much welcome the debate that we are now having on this company's affairs, because Parliament ought to be involved in industrial matters, since industrial decisions under all Governments come up for Ministerial consideration, and public money is involved in those cases. It really is quite right, where one has a complete case study of an intervention of this kind, that the House should examine what happened and consider why the decisions were taken and exactly what the outcome was.
The only thing which I found slightly hard to take from the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) was the suggestiton that there had been any reluctance on my part at any stage in this matter to give the view that I took and the reasons for it. I shall certainly take the opportunity now of going back over the story, because the House is entitled to hear what happened and why.

Mr. Cranley Onslow: I am much encouraged to hear that. May I assume that the right hon. Gentleman intends to publish the approved programme of work?

Mr. Benn: I think that the hon. Gentleman had better listen to my case.
I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South for the way he introduced the debate, in marked contrast to the Motions of censure which we have had hitherto.
A number of questions are raised by the Beagle case, and I want to go into them one by one. The first, on which

I think there will not be disagreement in the House, is whether the Government should help the aircraft industry as a whole. I believe this to be generally agreed.
I follow the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph). He has completed his fourth. In his first speech he said that there were certain sectors, like aircraft, shipbuilding, some electronics, and others, which looked to the Government for help for special reasons. The Government are involved in the aircraft industry, and in my judgment are bound to remain involved in it, partly because of the original defence interest, partly because of the high technical risk of certain projects and the cost involved, and because other countries help their aircraft industries. To hear some of the points made by the hon. Gentleman today, one would think that we were the only country which was involved in the support of parts of the aircraft industry. In the United States, there is massive support for aircraft and space programmes.
The implication of some of the speeches —and I thought that this was so even in what the hon. Gentleman said today—is that there is something wrong about the Government being interested in the light aircraft industry. If I am wrong, I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, to let him put the matter straight. The reason for the Government's interest is partly the balance of payments interest. Every aircraft produced in this country is an import saving, and some export advantage can be obtained from it.
In the light aircraft industry, which the hon. Gentleman differentiated from the highly-sophisticated aircraft industry, the case for support is rather different in character. I recognise that in respect of a supersonic aircraft the reason the Government go in is the high technical risk, and the fact that it will take a long time to produce, but in the case of light aircraft there is a mass market of a different kind; and unless one can break into that mass market one misses what in 1969 represented a market of about 13,000 light aircraft, with a value of £200 million.
The argument for going in on light aircraft is not like the other argument. It is that here there is a big market, and that


if we can break into it with help we may get our share of it. The expectation of future growth in this market was, and remains, very strong indeed.
Having given that general background, I come to the central question which is whether the Government should themselves have taken over Beagle. We were guided by a number of considerations, and not, as the hon. Gentleman knows, without having studied what the Plowden Report said about the light aircraft industry. It said, in paragraph 389:
It was represented to us that the manufacture of light aircraft ought to be well suited to the aptitudes and resources of British industry at the present time. The market is buoyant, the sums at risk in development are not excessive,"—
certainly, compared with some other aircraft projects—
and lower wage rates should give British manufacturers a marked initial advantage in costs over their American competitors.
Later, the report said:
If, on the contrary, light aircraft business were not approaching this objective by then,"—
that is, after a few years—
the case for continuing assistance would be open to question.
I am not shielding behind Plowden. I am only saying that in examining the problems of the light aircraft industry in about December, 1965—we reached our decision in 1966—we concluded that here was a big enough market to justify Government help to get into it, and that if it did not work the right thing to do would be to come out of it, and that is what we have done.
Let me make it clear now, and reiterate again and again, that I am responsible for this decision. The hon. Gentleman asked me the view of my advisers. He knew that that was a most improper question, because if, in answering such a question, a Minister could come to the House and say, "But I was advised to do this", that would put the responsibility upon his advisers. The reason Ministers take responsibility for what they do is to avoid that.
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman knew what he was doing when he put the question. If he really thinks that a Minister could or should come to the House and seek either to put the responsibility on his advisers, or in some

way to get out of his responsibility to Parliament, he has misunderstood the whole basis on which government works.

Mr. Corfield: The right hon. Gentleman knows that in the speeches of any Minister, of any party, one can find references to, "I am advised". Ministers have to rely on their professional advisers, and they say so.

Mr. Benn: I know, but the hon. Gentleman was trying to put me into the position where I was to reveal to the House what advice I might have had. He even used the extraordinary phrase, "Did the Minister overrule his advisers?". I have given the public advice which the Government sought from Plowden on the aircraft industry. I, personally, have accepted full responsibility for what we did, and I do not want to budge from that position.
The fact is that Beagle was a private company. It was referred to by Plowden as being rather a promising development. This is to be found in paragraph 387. Early in 1966 Beagle came to the Government and made a number of suggestions. One was a partnership arrangement with the Government, which we were not prepared to accept. An American company, General Dynamics, had a look at Beagle early in 1966. That company's view was that the range of aircraft was sound, and that eventually there were good prospects, but that the time to get the return was rather long. That is exactly the reason we reached the judgment, which I am now defending, that we should go in. Indeed, there was a suggestion at one stage that Handley Page might be linked with Beagle. I shall come back to Handley Page in another context.
At any rate, the decision to acquire it was taken. It was a matter of judgment. It was an evenly balanced argument. There was a real risk, and in the event that risk did not come off, but there were also real prospects of success for Beagle. Risk is inseparable from support for the aircraft industry. The question which the hon. Gentleman might have asked, but did not, is, "Is it wrong for the Government, in supporting the aircraft industry, to take a risk?". If the hon. Gentleman is asking that—and that is the only ground on which he can really attack the view that I took, even though,


in the event, my judgment has turned out not to have been justified—he is saying that it is wrong to take a risk in this respect in the aircraft industry.

Mr. Corfield: The right hon. Gentleman knows that I do not take that view. Will he advert to the point that we are covering a period of 18 months, and at the most two years?

Mr. Benn: I am dealing with whether we were right to take the risk at that time. In Committee on the Industrial Expansion Bill I was perfectly frank. I said:
In this area of aircraft projects, we are entering into an area of considerable interest and also uncertainty, but I was not unaffected by the fact that Plowden said that in this area there is a market, and with a bit of Government help there is a reasonable chance that this market, which is particularly suited to our skills, could be exploited. As I can only put my judgment against that of hon. Members opposite, I am bound to make that point."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E. 14th March, 1968; c. 404.]
Let me look at the risks the Government take in the aircraft business so that this debate is against a background of reality. On 17th December last I was asked by an hon. Member to give a table of Government financial contributions to and recoveries from civil aviation and engine development since 1959. I want to read to the House some of the figures and sums involved.
Let me take the Trident I and 1E. The Government contribution was £7¼ million and recoveries, £505,000; that is to say, the sum outstanding is £6·75 million; 93 per cent. of the money is still outstanding from the Government contribution. No Motion of censure on that. No condemnation of the Government for mishandling of the Trident matter. We shall come to that in a minute.
Let us come to the VC10. The Government contribution was £10·25 million, recoveries to date £943,000; amount of Government money outstanding, 91 per cent. No Motion of censure on that. No criticism of the Government for their handling of it. Then, the BAC111: £18·75 million Government contribution; recoveries to date, £1·629 million. There, 91 per cent. of the Government contribution is outstanding; no criticism and no Motion of censure on that. And why? Partly because these were private com-

panies receiving money from the Government.
That is one reason. The other is that, of course, it is much easier for the hon. Gentleman to get up and make his speech on risks that did not come off without referring to risks we have taken with brilliant aircraft which are selling abroad, but where it may well be that in the end the Government return will not be as great as the contribution.
I will not go on, but I could give further examples, and I would ask the hon. Gentleman to look at a Parliamentary answer on 17th December, cols. 349–50. The fact is that this was a risk. I took, and take, responsibility for it. In the event, for reasons to which I will come, the risks did not turn out to be justified, but it has to be set against a background of risk inseparable from support for the aircraft industry. Was the method of acquisition right? There has been much criticism from the hon. Gentleman about the way it was done. It was done by specific Parliamentary authority. Unlike launching aid—and I am not drawing a comparison because I agree that one was the acquisition of a company and the other was launching aid, under existing legislation—which we pay to companies without specific Parliamentary authority other than the general voting of money, we brought forward a special clause in the Industrial Expansion Bill. We tabled—and the hon. Gentleman may say it was a little late but he might have added that it was the first time it had ever been done—a forecast of the prospects of the company. The hon. Gentleman might have read what we said. No doubt the hon. Gentleman, who follows this most carefully, will have the reference before him, in paragraph 4:
It is expected that trading losses will continue to be incurred during the period while the planned programme is being built up.
and in paragraph 7:
As this complete range comes on to the market and turnover builds up it is estimated that a break-even point will be reached in 1972 with annual sales of £5 million to £6 million.
Therefore, nobody can deny—and the hon. Gentleman was on the committee at that time—that when Parliament was asked to support the acquisition of Beagle it was not given the fullest information


available to us. I am sure that there is no suggestion that we were in any way deficient in providing our best estimates. The acquisition was supported by the House. In fairness, hon. Gentlemen opposite voted against it, I know. They did not want it, and therefore, to that extent they can say, "We told you so". But hon. Gentlemen opposite also voted against the Industrial Expansion Act which supported the QE2. We do not hear much of our wisdom in supporting that. We do not hear much about our financial support for the Concorde. Their attitude on Beagle in the event, was justified, but we acted in a way which conveyed our forecasts, figures, anxieties and uncertainties more fully and frankly than had ever been done by any Government in presenting to Parliament a project for consideration of public support.
The next question is: did the Government, having acquired the company, handle its relations with it correctly in subsequent period? Of course, it was, and remains, a new type of enterprise. It was under the Companies Act. I suppose we might just draw a parallel with Cable and Wireless, but that was under very different circumstances. It was not a public corporation; it was not a mixed enterprise. We considered exactly what we thought would be right by way of surveillance and supervision. We appointed the chairman, sought a new managing director and appointed a new financial director. But we insisted—and when I was cross-examined by a sub-committee of the Nationalised Industry Committee I made clear—that this company should operate in a commercial environment. I am sure this was right.
I am sure that it was right to maintain a broad surveillance of the company before acquisition. We used to have quarterly meetings in which technical and financial aspects of the company were examined and the statements of accounts and directors' reports were available. After the company was set up we moved to six-monthly meetings with the directors. Internal reports and the directors' minutes were available to my Department; but, broadly, we left it to the company, and my own view is that that was absolutely right, because if we really want a company faced with an extremely

difficult competitive position to prosper we ought to leave it to the board of the company, having appointed it, to carry out its remit as best it can.

Mr. Onslow: Had not the Government long before the Industrial Expansion Bill came before the House already committed themselves to the equity and also made the appointments to the board of the company?

Mr. Benn: Yes, but the hon. Gentleman is now raising an extremely interesting but much wider question. Of course, Governments have always done this kind of thing subject to legislation. The reason for the Industrial Expansion Act was, as the hon. Gentleman will discover if he reads the debate, that we wanted to lay down a framework which would allow this to be done and allow Parliament to discuss this, issue by issue.
In the case of Beagle Aircraft it was not a general project under the Act but under—I believe—Section 12 of the Act. Looking back on the history the hon. Gentleman will find that Governments, because of the difficulty of legislation coming later, have always had to undertake certain things subject to Parliament; Parliament had absolute freedom, had it chosen, to oppose the Clause on Beagle, and to delete it, or to oppose the Act. But since I am the "father" of the Industrial Expansion Act I must repeat that it was intended to introduce a better system under which the House could decide and projects like International Computers Limited could be looked at on their merits.
The right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) says in his most recent speech—and there is something in it—that business men have increasingly complained of excessive changes and diversion from their primary task by ceaseless floods of questionnaires. I believe it is right that if one reaches a policy decision to acquire a firm one must provide the money, set up the company, appoint directors and then let them get on with the job. My own view is that in handling this we operated correctly.

Mr. F. A. Burden (Gillingham): The right hon. Gentleman has quite properly accepted full responsibility for what has happened, but I would like to ask him whether, if monthly board meetings of the company were held, reports of those


meetings were sent to him, and whether he personally examined them.

Mr. Benn: I cannot pretend that I examine personally all the matters in which public money is involved. We have a 69½ per cent. interest in Shorts and now an interest in the old Board of Trade Advisory Committee Local Employment Estates; and I cannot pretend that I personally examine the accounts of those matters. But I entirely accept responsibility for decisions reached under my authority within my Department, including decisions reached in the intervening period. My hon. Friend in answering will give such reply as he can but I am not shielding behind my officials in respect of the amount of surveillance that was undertaken. In discussing the right level of surveillance with the company, I was satisfied that the level to be instituted was the right one.
Did the company handle its affairs properly? Not much was made by the hon. Gentleman of that. He made some references to certain aspects of the framework which was set, the borrowing limits laid down and the operation by the company within those limits and that framework.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to the pension fund. Whatever his comment may have been on that, there was nothing improper in the company wanting to continue; and this is, in any case, a Motion of censure upon me and not on the company. That is quite right and I make it clear that it would be wrong for the company or the work force to be blamed for the outcome of the affair.
Was it right for the Government to end the support when they did? The hon. Gentleman made a great deal of what he called the 18-month period which had elapsed. I remind him that escalation is not unheard of in the aircraft industry. [An HON. MEMBER: "The right hon. Gentleman can say that again."] I will. Escalation is not unheard of in the aircraft industry. It is certainly not confined to Beagle. In any case, forecasts by anyone are liable to uncertainties and in this case the situation changed for the worse.
All I put to the House is that we told the company that we would support

it to a certain extent and that, when it came to us in the autumn and said that it could not do the job on the money provided, we said, "All right. You cannot go on." We set this environment of the limits of public support and at the end said that the company could not go on.
The company had asked for a further £6 million. If that money had been put in, it might have worked. The Bulldog had been sold to Sweden and Zambia against competition. The Pup was a popular aircraft and had received very good references from those who had flown it. The whole thing might have worked if we had put the extra money in, but of course, there would have been a three-year slippage of the break-even point.
The hon. Gentleman himself suggested that break-even would have been put back from 1972 to 1975. In addition, the marketing problem of selling a light aircraft in a world 91 per cent. dominated by the American light aircraft manufacturers is such that we thought it right not to go on. The loss involved has been £5·98 million in terms of money out of £6 million, plus whatever the outstanding liabilities to creditors may happen to be. That is the price paid for the risk.
This is not the first crash of an aircraft company. To listen to the hon. Gentleman, one would think that only Beagle had gone wrong and that the reputation of all other aircraft firms was such that they would never be bankrupt. I remind him, however, that the Opposition are criticising us for not doing enough for Handley Page, which is to be debated later in the week. The fact is that Beagle was not the first company to go bankrupt. If the Government decide to go in with a company, with a clear objective and a limited sum of money, and that project goes wrong and the Government decide to stick to their original intention and not provide more money and the company goes bankrupt, then the Government have behaved perfectly correctly and in a completely defensible way.

Mr. Corfield: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will bear in mind that he will find no reference from me to the fact that we should put money into either of these bankrupt firms.

Mr. Benn: I would never believe that the hon. Gentleman would want to put any money into public enterprise, or either Handley Page or Beagle. But week after week he rises, with an eager look in his eye, to show his support for private aircraft companies which we have defended and supported.

Mr. Eric Lubbock: The right hon. Gentleman is lucky that he does not have to bear Lockheed's burden.

Mr. Benn: That is another question.
I come now to two consequentials. The hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South did not raise them, but some of my hon. Friends may do so in the debate. They revolve round the question whether we handled the staff properly in the circumstances following the decision not to go ahead.

Mr. Julian Amery: Will the right hon. Gentleman expound on the reasons which led the Government not to put in more money? He passed it over rather lightly, simply saying that they took a view and a judgment.

Mr. Benn: I will do my best. I was taking up the points put by the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South.
A contrary view has been expressed that it would have been better even so to have put this £6 million in, recognising that the money would have come back at the earliest three years later. We considered this very carefully. The best way to handle matters of this kind is to be clear from the outset what one's objective is—in this case, to break into the light aircraft industry, with the Beagle Aircraft Company as the instrument. One decides the amount to be spent and upon the minimal but adequate surveillance which will be necessary, ensuring that one does not interfere. One gives an absolute commitment in and out. That is right.
Of course, the temptation to any Government to go on and on and hope that things will come out right is extremely great, as the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) knows. If one is thought to be the sort of Government or Minister who succumbs to such temptation, one is immediately taking the pressure off the board of the company concerned. Instead of dealing with the company on the basis that, "We have

given you the job to do and the money to do it with", one would be dealing with it on the basis that, if it came back to one, it might get more money.
I cannot conceal from the House that, having given money to the company, the outcome has been a great personal disappointment to me. We deeply regretted to have to conclude that it could not go on. It was a very painful decision for the Government.

Mr. Burden: The right hon. Gentleman said that the American industry has 91 per cent. of the light aircraft market. It has had this for a long time. Was this factor considered at the beginning of the Beagle project or at the end? It was obvious at the beginnig that the Americans had a very great control over the market. Surely the considerable difficulties which must face Beagle were realised.

Mr. Benn: I pointed out that the Americans dominate the market and that this is one of the reasons that the Plowden Committee recommended that we should attempt to get in. We tried, and in the event did not succeed. The American dominance proved extremely difficult to overcome.
I turn now to the staff questions with which some of my hon. Friends were deeply involved. We were determined to treat the people working for the company in the same way as good commercial employers would treat them. Superannuation and redundancy and holidays for 1970 were not an issue. The Contracts of Employment Act and the question of contracts and supplementary payments were discussed. In the event, the settlement of £140,000 which was reached commanded the general understanding of those involved.
In Shoreham, the latest figures for unemployment showed that, out of the 230 Beagle people who had been on the books of the local employment exchange, only 37 were still left—and this number has probably fallen since then. From the employment point of view, therefore, the situation has not been as serious as it might have been if it had occurred in other areas.

Miss Mervyn Pike: Will the right hon. Gentleman give the figures for Rearsby as well as Shoreham?

Mr. Benn: My hon. Friend, in replying to the debate, will deal with the hon. Lady's question.
I come now to a question of which the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South did not make much. Indeed, he could not do so. We decided to pay the creditors in full. The decision was based on the unique circumstances of Beagle's acquisition by the Government and the circumstances I have described in my speech. I detected in what the hon. Gentleman said a suggestion that, had we not done this, he would have censured us for not doing it. But we have done it and it was right to do it. I cannot give the figures of the amount involved, because valuation claims have not yet come in.
I come now to the question of what lessons must be drawn from the Beagle story. My first lesson, I think the House must recognise, is that risk is inevitable if one is going into this area at all. The hon. Gentleman said this himself. Judgments have to be made by somebody—in this case by Ministers. I made the judgment; I am answerable to the House for this, and this is right and proper. With no risk, there is no gain.
Take other projects which are urged very strongly in the House by Members, Handley-Page, which some urge as the case to be supported; the BAC211, which we did not support; BAC311 and the RB211–50 series which are now before us. I am extremely cautious in giving support to aircraft projects. The criticism normally levelled against me from the other side of the House is that we take too commercial a view. I think it right we should do so; at the same time, there is bound to be risk; it will not always come off.
Does this story justify a Motion of censure? Even though moved so very courteously, politely and modestly by the hon. Gentleman, I think that the Opposition's Motion of censure is humbug. There is a double standard on all these questions from hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House. On the one hand, if they can use a story like this as a means of attacking public enterprise it is a Motion of censure, a three-line Whip, Press releases from the Conservative Central Office. But if it is asking for money for private enterprise, whether in the aircraft industry or any-

where else, it is a totally different story. Whether it succeeds or whether it fails, if it is private enterprise there is never the examination afterwards of the kind we have had today; an examination which, the House should know, I welcome.
There is a second element of humbug about the Motion: the sharp contrast between the public speeches of right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen opposite up and down the country, seeking to give the impression that Government should play a smaller part in relation to industry, with the host of hon. Members of the House coming in a private, constituency, or trade association capacity, seeking Government support for one project after another.
I have absolutely no complaint if a Member comes from the other side of the House as a constituency Member to ask for Government support for industry in his constituency. I have no complaint if the Member comes—there are some of them who have occupied, or still occupy, senior positions in a trade association—asking for Government support for the trade which is represented by that trade association. I do not object if there are firms that come for Government support and have hon. Members on their board of directors. What I object to is that whilst this goes on and on privately, publicly it is denounced by hon. Gentlemen opposite as Government waste, regarded as an example of intervention by Government in industry.
I say that the open palm for help and the open mouth of denunciation is basically a fraudulent view to put to the electorate. I ask hon. Members opposite to be a little more honest about how they present these issues to the electorate.
If the weekend speeches by the party opposite had been acted upon, there would have been no Beagle; Shorts would have closed; Upper Clyde Shipbuilders would have closed; and, according to Sir John Hunter, if R.E.P. were withdrawn Swan Hunter would be faced with, I think his word was, "bankruptcy". The VC10 would not have been built, the BAC111 would not have been built if the weekend speeches are to be believed —but nobody does believe the weekend speeches because everybody in industry knows that the Government must help in certain cases.
They will not always succeed if they help, but, on balance of payments grounds, on industrial policy grounds, on technological grounds, and on employment grounds it is necessary to bring those public speeches in line with what hon. Members know to be necessary for the survival and strength of our economy, particularly in the engineering industry.
A Motion of censure like this looks grand when presented as part of the broad Conservative vision of withdrawal from industry, but nobody would squeal louder than people who support the party opposite and individual Members were I to take the slightest notice of what was said in weekend speeches—if they came to us to support them in the project. For that reason, I do not believe that the Motion is serious, or to be taken seriously, or that the House ought to pass it.

4.45 p.m.

Mr. Tom Boardman: The Minister is saying that the Motion of censure is not to be taken seriously, and shows this in the somewhat lighthearted way in which he is dealing with this.
The right hon. Gentleman has cost the country, by his own incompetence, some £7 million; he has put out of work 1,000 or more skilled men. He has damaged the name and reputation of Britain overseas by the arbitrary cancellation of contracts. If this does not justify a Motion of censure, then what does?
The Minister made much play of the commercial approach here. In private enterprise such a record would have justified the sack. A Motion of censure is letting the Minister off lightly.

Mr. Lubbock: Mr. Arthur Weinstock has just closed a factory in my constituency employing well over 1,000 men. The shareholders have not passed a motion of censure on him.

Mr. Boardman: Mr. Weinstock has also produced some very large dividends for his shareholders and has carried out a reconstruction which his shareholders support.
We have a different story here. The Minister raised the point whether it is wrong to take a risk. Of course it is not, provided the right advice is taken. Why did he not accept the challenge by

my hon. Friend in saying whether or not he had, from the outset, been advised that this venture was justified only if it were backed to the tune of a further £10 million? If that was the advice he received —and I believe it may well have been—then he was quite wrong to make the decision. His judgment was unsound and the risk was unjustified.
The Minister makes the further point that his belief is that when one appoints people to the top one should let them get on with the job. In this case, however, it was not so. He has only to refer to the articles of association of the Company to see how the management was hamstrung. It could not move without the consent of 90 per cent. of the shareholders—that is, the Minister; they could not borrow more than £100,000, and so on.
I have some constituency interest with employees and creditors, which I do not propose to develop here. On the question of employees, thanks to the pressure that has been applied principally by my hon. Friend the Member for Melton (Miss Pike) and hon. Members on both sides of the House, the terms offered to them are very much better than when first announced. But this does not compensate these men for the loss of jobs or for breaking up these skilled teams. This is entirely due to the incompetence of the Minister who accepts the responsibility.

Mr. Benn: The dismissal of the staff would have occurred four years ago if the Government had not come in. If the hon. Gentleman is to explain to people that they would still be working if it were not for the Government, would he perhaps tell the House exactly on what basis and who would have been financing it?

Mr. Boardman: The situation in 1966 was different from that which exists today. In 1969 the Minister was going round to the places concerned saying "All is well with Beagle". I have forgotten the exact phraseology, but he was keeping people in the job and giving them every encouragement to stay there. In 1966 many of them saw the way the industry was going; many of them were moving out into other occupations. It may well have been that if the Government had not intervened at that time the company would have taken a


different form, maybe a smaller form; I do not know. This is not the subject of the debate today.

Mr. Burden: In 1966 two companies, including an American company, showed an interest in Beagle. The American company thought it could be viable in a couple of years. Since the decision by the Government, nobody has taken any interest whatever in the company and it is looked upon as a complete failure.

Mr. Boardman: I move from the employee question to that of creditors. We are glad the creditors will be paid in full, but let the Government take no credit for this. After all, it is coming out of the public purse.
I fail to understand how the Minister could say that there had never been any doubt expressed that the creditors would not be paid in full. If I have misquoted him, I apologise, but, in the debate on 27th January, the Parliamentary Secretary said:
The Government have received representations from a number of creditors from the company which raised a number of issues which are still the subject of legal advice." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th January, 1970; Vol. 794, c. 1252.]
This is hardly something to console creditors. People cannot, with that, be sure that they will get their money. There was grave doubt and grave anxiety in the minds of many of them, as the Minister knows, about whether they would be paid or not. Yet these are the people who granted credit only because of the Government backing and the flurry of optimism, with statements like, "We believe in Beagle", and the Minister's attitude of confidence, which encouraged people, believing that this was a Government industry and that the Government would foot the bill, to put money in.
Had they not been paid, it would have been very close to fraud—[An HON. MEMBER: "How?"] The fact that the Minister had never expressed a doubt—[Interruption.] He never expressed doubt. Why did he not say on the first day that every creditor would be paid in full? In fact, he issued a debenture and obtained priority for part of the Government loan, leaving the unsecured creditors low down the line. Of course that was a device to get a receiver appointed, but if the Minister had, from the word "Go", intended that creditors

would be paid in full, that should have been said, and it would have removed a great deal of doubt—

Mr. Russell Kerr: The hon. Member's priorities are very interesting.

Mr. Boardman: The Government must recognise this. If the position is that creditors in such cases will always be paid in full, let us think through the consequences. Can we assume that in every venture in which the Government invest money the creditors will automatically be paid in full? This is something which the Minister had better say—

Mr. Lubbock: The hon. Gentleman cannot have been listening to the Minister, because the right hon. Gentleman said that the company was taken over before the Industrial Expansion Act and that, therefore, it is a special case. So the hon. Gentleman is not entitled to assume that, in future, if such a company goes bankrupt, the creditors will be paid in full.

Mr. Boardman: I am talking about creditors subsequent to the taking-over by the Government. There was already an undertaking that the creditors of the former company would be paid in full, but from the time the Government acquired all the capital, the creditors legally were not entitled to be paid in full. The right hon. Gentleman now says that he had always intended that they would be paid in full—[Interruption.] The Minister did not say that at the beginning, so there remained a doubt that they would he paid in full. This is what I said.
The Minister must think through the consequences. Whenever the Government intervene in industry they give a false credit-rating to the company; they must think carefully of the consequences to creditors if they are not willing to back their takeover with a complete undertaking to pay the bills.

Mr. Russell Kerr: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is there any way in which we can prevent the hon. Member for Leicester, South-East from chasing his own tail around in this fashion?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harry Gourlay): The hon. Member knows that that is not a point of order. He must listen to the comments of the other side.

Mr. Boardman: For the record, it had better be made clear that my constituency is Leicester, South-West. I would hate my hon. Friend to be accused of chasing his own tail.
The normal warning lights are missing from a case like Beagle. In private enterprise, the failures of a company to pay in time, to take discounts and so on, are the warning lights which prevent large bills mounting up. When Governments are involved there are no warning lights. The Government must accept the consequences of this danger to which they and creditors are exposed.
The damage to overseas trade here has been brushed aside very lightly by the Minister. Contracts with overseas Governments have been arbitrarily broken. When The Prime Minister gives his next pompous lecture to exporters, about exporters falling down on deliveries, I suggest that he puts the Minister in the corner with a dunce's cap on. If ever we wanted proof that export achievements are made despite and not because of the Government, it is here. The damage done to the reputation of this country when a Government-owned company accepts orders and then cannot fulfil them is very grave and not one to be dismissed lightly, as hon. Members opposite seem inclined to do.

Mr. Lubbock: This is the very opposite argument from the one put by the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield), who said that, in the end, the Minister had made the right decision to appoint a receiver. The hon. Member is saying that he should have put this £6 million in so that the exports to Sweden could have continued. Which is the policy of the Opposition?

Mr. Boardman: The hon. Gentleman should pay more attention and allow me to develop my argument. My hon. Friend's argument was that the investment was probably wrong from its inception. My hon. Friend made it clear, as I make it clear, that we are not suggesting putting more money in. What we are censuring the Minister for is creating a state of affairs in which substantial contracts are placed by an overseas Government with a company here which is Government-owned, and they are then broken and cancelled. We cannot dismiss the damage which has been done.
The Minister implied that there has been complete frankness and that, from the outset, this investment had specific Parliamentary authority. I query whether the 1966 agreement was fully and frankly explained to the House. To all intents and purposes, it amounted to the taking over by the Government, to an undertaking to pay the £1 million for the equity capital in any event, to pay the debts, and to find all the finance that was needed; an agreement that the Government would appoint the majority of the directors and that the company would act in accordance with the instructions of those directors.
From 1966 until the Industrial Expansion Act could make it legitimate the company was, through the device of that agreement, operating in exactly the same way as it has been operating subsequently. For the Minister to come here in a white sheet and claim that there was a specific Parliamentary authority is not being completely frank with the House. If the agreement had not been approved by the House, the obligation still remained upon the Government—

Mr. Benn: Mr. Benn indicated dissent.

Mr. Boardman: The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but he should read the agreement. The company would have been wound up and the Government were then bound to pay £1 million for the equity and meet the bill for the losses, and they were entitled to any profit that was made. The only thing that would have altered is that, instead of the company continuing, if the House had not approved the agreement, it would have been wound up. During the interval 1966–68 the Government operated in exactly the same way, or had the power to operate in the same way, as they did subsequently.

Mr. Austen Albu: The hon. Gentleman claims that if the House had not passed the Bill the company would have been wound up. How, then, would he have kept employment for the 1,000 people in his constituency who are now losing their employment because, he says, of the Government's action?

Mr. Boardman: The hon. Gentleman has returned to an earlier point. If this company was not viable in 1966, it might have been reformed in some other way.
Some private enterprise might have taken it over—

Mr. Albu: None was interested.

Mr. Boardman: We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) that there would have been interest in it at that time. But we are not debating 1966 now: we are debating the situation in 1969 and 1970, and the conduct of the Minister in the interval.
There has been less than frankness in some of the figures disclosed. We have been told that the amount of the deficiency might be expected to be £1·2 million. I have seen the declaration of solvency in the files, and I doubt very much whether the Minister has told the House fully the extent of the likely loss. The figures show assets estimated to realise just under £1 million, of which stock and work in progress account for £590,000. I believe that a more realistic assessment of realisable assets is well under £100,000, and a figure as low as a few thousand pounds has been quoted.
Has the Minister really given the attention to the extent of the deficiency that the figures justify? There seems to have been some covering up.

Mr. Benn: indicated dissent.

Mr. Boardman: The Minister shakes his head, but there has been a lack of frankness throughout in the disclosure of the figures.
I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to turn his thoughts to the pension fund. I have given him notice of points I would raise. The fund was originally raised by me in a letter to the Minister on 6th January, on the question of deficiency. I did not receive a reply until 15 March, and this referred me to the debate in another place, where the noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, had said:
Perhaps I should add a brief word about the superannuation fund. As a result of changes which were taking place at the time the receiver and manager was appointed, arrangements with the life assurance companies broke down and Her Majesty's Government accordingly made arrangements with those companies to ensure that valid claims would continue to be met."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 19th February, 1970; Vol. 307, c. 1328.]
That was not the whole story by a long way.
It was in reply to a Question by the hon. Member for Poplar (Mr. Mikardo) that we got the true story. The hon. Gentleman asked on 23rd February what deficiency would have to be made up, and, after repeating a statement very similar to that given in another place, the Minister's reply said that the arrangements to appoint a receiver broke down:
The amount outstanding at the date of the appointment of the receiver and manager was approximately £58,000."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd February, 1970; Vol. 796, c. 222.]
The question had related to a deficiency in the appropriate amount of the company's and employees' contributions. Does the Answer mean that the employees' contributions have not been paid into the pension fund? Does it mean that the employers have not paid their contribution? Did the trustees provide that there should be an obligation on the company to make such payments and the trustees to receive them? If so, it is a state of affairs which would be intolerable in the private sector.
I could continue with many more criticisms of the administration. Throughout the whole pattern of the company there has been a type of trading with large deficiencies which would become very close to fraudulent trading in the private sector—large deficiencies mounting up and yet the company continuing trading without any assurance that the debts would be paid.
I have said enough to show that, instead of being brushed off lightly by the Minister, the matter is a public scandal which cannot be hushed up by buying off the creditors and employees, by buying off trouble out of the public purse. This is the kind of operation the Government put in the forefront of their strategy. "Agenda for a Generation" has this type of operation in it. We are entitled to a full public inquiry into the management of the company and the whole sordid story. It is the Minister's sole responsibility. He has poured £7 million down the drain.

Mr. Russell Kerr: My right hon. Friend is an amateur compared with some of the hon. Gentleman's lot.

Mr. Onslow: I wholeheartedly support my hon. Friend's call for a full public inquiry. Does he agree that it is significant that the Minister made no response


to my question on why he did not publish the approved programme of work?

Mr. Boardman: I entirely agree, and I waited anxiously for that, because the right hon. Gentleman's reply suggested to my hon. Friend that he was coming to that point. But he evaded it.
Whatever qualities the Minister has—and no doubt he has many—to leave him in charge of a vast, overgrown Department which is meddling and muddling in every aspect of industrial life is irresponsible.

Mr. Russell Kerr: Speed it up.

Mr. Boardman: The hon. Gentleman would like to brush the matter off lightly. If Ministerial responsibility meant anything, as it did once upon a time, the Minister should not need to be told either that a public inquiry was needed or that it was right for him to resign. He has not responded to either of those appeals, but I hope that by the end of the debate he will have second thoughts.

5.5 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Jay: The hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) seemed to show a certain amount of moderation and courtesy, though not very much sense. The hon. Member for Leicester, South-West (Mr. Tom Boardman) seemed to show neither sense nor moderation, and he did not show very much courtesy either.
The real question before us is whether the decision the Government have now taken is right. What I found rather shocking about the speeches of the hon. Gentlemen opposite was their almost complete indifference to the future of the British light aircraft industry or the future of British aircraft, or of all the assets and technical expertise involved in the production of the Beagle Company. On the evidence before us, the question is whether the Government are justified in abandoning the enterprise at this stage. I have listened to what my right hon. Friend said, and agree that it is an arguable case. But what is the use of having a Ministry of Technology, an I.R.C., or an Industrial Expansion Act if we are not prepared to take a risk in enterprises of this kind?
Until I heard the two Opposition speeches I thought at least that we were all agreed that we in this country must foster modern high-technology industries. I also thought that there was no dispute amongst us on the facts that the light aircraft industry is an expanding world industry. Some people would say that it is the most rapidly expanding form of aircraft manufacture. It has both a civil and a military market, and, as my right hon. Friend said, the Plowden Report thought that it had a considerable future.
I did not think that there was any dispute either—but hon. Gentlemen opposite did not raise or discuss this question—that if the Beagle Company goes out of business altogether the light aircraft industry in the non-Communist world will be almost entirely handed over to the United States.
There is also not much doubt that if an enterprise of this kind were successful very large exports are possible for this country, and that if we have no manufacturer there will be large imports of light aircraft. I believe that home sales are about 300 a year; and, therefore, the balance of payments is considerably affected one way or the other.
I agree that all these general considerations might be quite irrelevant if the company were technically unsound or had been proved incapable of attracting orders at home or abroad. But that is the reverse of the truth. It was neither true in 1966, when the original decision was taken, nor is it true now. According to my information, at the end of November, when the receiver was appointed, the Beagle Company had altogether about 350 planes on order. In the six months up to that date it had received orders for another 190 planes, of which 160, or rather more, were for export.

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: Does the right hon. Gentleman know that Beagle cannot say what the break-even figure on the Pup was, and that the 206 was not a successful aircraft?

Mr. Jay: There were very considerable orders available to this company. I am coming to the question of whether these might have been profitable.
The Minister made clear that at this moment the company is short of cash and


its operations are not immediately profitable. As my right hon. Friend has already said, when mentioning Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, all that could have been said of Fairfields and Upper Clyde Shipbuilders three or four years ago. Their operations at that time were unprofitable and they could be kept going only if some infusion of capital was made available from the Government. The position today is that Upper Clyde Shipbuilders has a flourishing order book and Q.E.2 is earning large profits. It would have been extremely short-sighted on the evidence available in the case of Fairfield and John Brown's to abandon an enterprise of this kind when the project was doing well and there were long-term prospects but an immediate shortage of cash.
According to my information not merely the company itself but the Ministry of Technology was satisfied that, provided that the extra money was made available, this company by 1974 or 1975—I agree that is some years ahead, but that is the nature of aircraft production—would be earning a reasonable return on the capital employed. Hon. Members opposite are clearly aghast at the money put into this business, but, as my right hon. Friend said, we did not have similar protests when capital was put into Trident, the BAC1–11 and other ventures.

Mr. Onslow: I am able to explain it to the right hon. Gentleman. We have so far no reason to suppose that there has been anything like the mismanagement in those cases as in this.

Mr. Jay: As the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) has so much to say, perhaps he will make a speech later in this debate.
I was about to say to the Minister, however much the hon. Member may know about aircraft production, that one does not have to go simply to the aircraft industry to find curious comments on the scale of values in Government expenditure. One of the Greater London Council's single motorway proposals which has some effect on areas connected with my constituency, against which hon. Members opposite made no protest, is now expected to cost £16 million a mile. It is an extraordinary sense of priorities if

we are prepared to abandon the British light aircraft industry, which no doubt has some risks but has enormous export possibilities to save £6 million and yet are prepared to put up the same amount for 600 yards of a motorway which the great majority of people in London do not want to be built.
There seems to be something totally wrong with the judgment of priorities. We do not have any Motions of censure, however, moved by hon. Members opposite about either other aircraft projects or the lavish spending of public money on motorways such as I have mentioned. Speaking purely for myself, I would rather have a British light aircraft industry than 600 yards more motorway in South London. If people differ from me about this, they are welcome to do so; but I do not think they are showing a very balanced judgment on financial or human priorities.
What has emerged from this debate is that the party opposite takes a narrow accountancy view, to put it at its best, and a narrow political partisan view, to put it more realistically, and shows an extraordinary indifference to the future of this section of British industry and British exports which might have been won by perhaps a little more constructive infusion of capital. If anyone is deserving of censure today, it is not my right hon. Friend but the narrow and irresponsible attitude of hon. Members opposite towards the future of the British aircraft industry.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. Cranley Onslow: We have to hand it to the Minister of Technology. He managed to speak for 36 minutes without answering any of the real questions or touching on any of the real issues. It is not a bit surprising to me that some people tip him as a possible Socialist Prime Minister, because he seems to have what it takes for that. [Interruption.] I shall not take long unless I am provoked, but I can be provoked.
I want to ask only five questions, four of which are addressed to the proceedings which I think will take place in due course in the Public Accounts Committee of this House, questions which in other circumstances I should be happy to address not to the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee but to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The first of these questions is: why was the Beagle Aircraft Company never properly capitalised? The Minister promised us that it would be. In the Standing Committee he said:
the £2·5 million to be provided will be £2 million in shares issued by Her Majesty's Government and the balance by bank overdraft secured in the assets but possibly subject to Government guarantees."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E, 14th March,1968; c. 405.]
That assurance was repeated in the memorandum which, by something of an innovation, was subsequently made available to the House, but was never debated in the House. Part of paragraph 3 states:
On the enactment of the necessary legislation the purchase will be completed and a new Beagle company set up; the Government's interest will then be represented by shares in the new company. Further payments to the company by the Government beyond the vesting date will be taken out in the form of further issues from authorised share capital. It is envisaged that the fluctuating balance of working capital will be provided by bank facilities; this is estimated to be of the order of £0·5 million.
Hon. Members who have been lucky enough to see the memorandum and the articles of association of this company will know, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) reminded the House, when he opened the debate, that the company was given an authorised share capital of 1 million £1 shares, of which apparently only two were issued. This point was made by my hon. Friend, and the Minister carefully ignored it. The House will also know that such capital as was made available to the company came mainly in the form of loans ad hoc from the Ministry of Technology under Section 103(2) of the articles of association; but the company was not capitalised as the House had been told it would be. Why not?
I think I can say why not but I would rather that the Minister did so. If he does not wish to do so, I can tell the House that it was not for want of requests from the company. I believe that in due course we shall have documents laid before the House which will show that I am not exaggerating in that statement. I believe we may also see some papers ultimately which will show that the Minister has grossly over-simplified the loan situation, and that, in fact, money

was made available to the company only in small dribs and drabs doled out by the Department of which he is the head, to meet debts which had already been incurred. This is not the capitalisation the House was told there would be.
I believe the reason for this was that throughout the over-riding objective of the Minister's civil servants was to minimise the amount of money the Government stood to lose. I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say on that point.
My second question is: why has the Minister refused to publish the approved programme of work? I asked him last week if he would do so, and perhaps I may remind the House what he said. The final paragraph of his reply is as follows:
The approved programme was fully discussed with the company and it would not be normal to publish this kind of document.— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd March, 1970; Vol. 797, c. 21.]
I do not suppose the Minister will contradict me if I tell him that it would not be normal for a company owned by the Government to go broke, so I do not think that the defence of abnormality will get him very far.
I think I can tell the House what is the true reason, although I would rather the Minister did so. He does not seem to wish to. I believe that the reason is that if it were published it would invalidate the excuses which he has given to the House for precipitating the winding up of the company. It would show—and I believe it will show—that the family of aircraft was a matter which was in the approved programme of work, and that there is nothing new here, carefully though the Minister has sought to pretend that there is.
My third question is: did the Government ever believe that £2·5 million capital was enough? I do not believe they did. My hon. Friends quite properly expressed doubts about this on the information which was presented to them when the Industrial Expansion Bill was in Committee. I do not think that there was anything in the memorandum, which was subsequently published but never debated, which could be held to have allayed those doubts.
The truth is that the Minister knew, and had been told, that it would take


as much as £10 million to make the project succeed. I believe that documents may subsequently become available to the House to show that to be so. These are matters in which the Public Accounts Committee may, very properly, be interested. I believe that the Minister was told that £10 million would be needed, that he said that if the company could show it was on the way to success it could come back to him in due course and ask for, more money, and that he encouraged the company to proceed on precisely this basis. When he says that there was an element of risk in this enterprise, he is right, but he has not told the House how large he knew the risk to be. In course of time, the House will be provided with proof of that.
My fourth question is: why was the cancellation decision taken when it was? I do not believe in the alibi of the family of aircraft. I think that is untrue, and that in time we shall come to know it is untrue. It is interesting that there is no indication in any statement made by the Minister, or in his speech today, that consideration was ever given to anything but cancellation, and we are carefully led to believe that the action that was taken was inevitable. Why? This company still had some money to draw on. It had not exhausted its borrowing powers; there was still about £400,000 which it could raise from the Ministry of Technology and it still had—I suppose unused, unless under this head is covered the borrowing from the pension fund—an authorisation to borrow up to £500,000 from private sources. It seems that there was £900,000 to be drawn upon, unless the Minister has not been completely frank with the House.
I notice, with interest, that the right hon. Gentleman prefers to leave us rather than be frank with us. [Interruption.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite say that the Minister has been sitting here for two hours. If he had been, as in other circumstances he might have been, in a court of law, he would have had to sit here for longer than two hours. Perhaps for the Minister, it is just as well that it is not a court of law.
The Government, without telling the House whether they have looked at any alternative, have said that the company

must close. They have taken steps to make it necessary for it to close. They have pulled the rug out from under it. My hon. Friend touched on the reasons for this. It is plain what happened. The Minister probably genuinely believed that if he could show that the company was succeeding he would be able to go back to the Treasury in time and get leave to borrow the balance of the money needed to make the project a success, which was, let us say, between £6 million and £8 million.
The Minister in his enthusiasm may have thought that he would be able to pull that off when the time came, but when the time came those two great friends of the British aviation industry, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said to him words to this effect: "We are sorry about your predicament, but you have just been to us and asked for some money for another project in an area where, to put it bluntly, there are some marginal seats for Labour, and we see no marginal seats for Labour in Sussex".

Mr. Jay: The hon. Gentleman is a great believer in interruptions. Will he say whether or not he would have put more public money into this venture at this stage?

Mr. Onslow: The right hon. Gentleman is a great believer in irrelevancies. I will make my speech in my own way.
When the Treasury said to the Minister of Technology that there were no marginal seats to be bought—[HON. MEMBERS: "0h."] Hon. Gentlemen opposite are naive in the extreme. I must remind them, in case they are unaware of it, that they are in an election year, and if they believe that they will hold every seat in Scotland they are considerably mistaken.
My last question to the House—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—I do not expect hon. Gentlemen opposite to like this, and I do not expect them to like my final question, which is this: what, in honour, prevents the Minister from resigning? His defence—and he has reminded us of it—is as follows:
In this area of aircraft projects, we are entering into an area of considerable interest and also uncertainty, … and with a bit of Government help there is a reasonable chance that this market, which is particularly suited to our skills, could be exploited.


Then there are these important words:
As I can only put my judgment against that of hon. Members opposite, I am bound to make that point."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E, 14th March, 1968; c. 404.]
It would be a fair point, and one which the House would accept, if we could also accept that the Minister's judgment was an honest one.
The House would have been prepared to accept that today if the Minister had shown the least willingness to get up when I gave him the chance to do so and answer from the Dispatch Box the questions which I put to him. The fact that he did not answer them seems to me to indicate quite clearly that he knows that the answers would destroy his ambitions.
When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) says how sad it seems to him that he has heard no word from this side of the House to lament the destruction of this promising area of British aviation, I would say that he can hear it now from me, with interest. It seems to me to be the most shocking and callous act of irresponsibility that the Minister of Technology has been prepared to sacrifice this company on the altar of his own political ambitions. I am sure that the truth will catch up with him. I believe that if he does not resign now, he will be destroyed later.

5.31 p.m.

Mr. Eric Moonman: What can one say when following such a nasty little speech? [HON. MEMBERS: "Ignore it."] It is difficult to know exactly what has been happening since the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) has been performing in the debate like a roaring yo-yo. His speech has been presented throughout the whole afternoon in episodes, like a detective thriller. His speech was not worthy of him or of the House.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: His speech was very worthy of him.

Mr. Moonman: We began the debate with two very good speeches. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Technology made one of his best speeches in the House when explaining his area of responsibility and the detailed action he took.
The speech from the Opposition Front Bench was most courteous and explained the tragic nature of this particular case.
It would be a great pity if the Opposition decided that the General Election campaign should start this afternoon. Some of their utterances sounded a bit like it. The first shots have been fired. This is a pity because we are here to examine an important technological problem involved. It is not only a reflection of the aircraft industry, but of many other industries as well. I would suggest that we have a responsibility to look at the whole question of the relationship between Government and industry, and this is what I shall seek to do in the brief time available to me, since this is to be a short debate.
The first thing that strikes any reasonable observer of the Beagle aircraft matter is that there is an apparent confusion in Government industrial relations. Those who would dispute the supporting rôle of government over the last few years would seem to be unable to recognise the changing economic and social needs. Few would deny the contribution made by the Government to key industries like the computer industry, or in support of the development areas, or in aid to stimulate management technological skills.
The Government's policy on the Beagle matter is somewhat ambiguous. It emphasises the absence of any distinctive policy over the last 20 years on the broad question of Government industrial relations. Contrary to what has been said by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) outside the House, no philosophical dispute has triggered this off. I do not believe that the Government are aiming to take over large sectors of industry. I do not believe that there is a particular Socialist conspiracy at work. In fact, this may be part of the problem. It may be that we have not thought out the exact relationship, the degree of control, the sectors of management responsibility necessary when government become a partner in industry.
Nevertheless, critics of the Government's rôle in industrial affairs sometimes advocate a return to a state of laissez-faire. Such critics can hardly be taken seriously, nor can the hon. Member for Leicester, South-West (Mr. Tom


Boardman) when he talks of a return to such an earlier state of affairs. We have not really had such a economic free-for-all since the middle of the 19th century when the appalling social consequences of rapid industrialisation forced governments to intervene with Factory Acts and the like. Because of the need to get the most out of our industrial opportunities, because of trend towards research and development and the exploitation of industry government has become involved in industry.
And so we have a system of grants and loans, especially advantageous in development areas—which are often places whose original prosperity depended on an industry now superseded—and our system of loans and allowances to encourage workers to become more mobile. Scientific and technological advances have affected the structure of industry making the small unit uneconomic and fostering the group enterprise. Industry itself, as the Minister has said, has been driven to seek Government assistance, mainly financial, in restructuring and in setting up and forwarding the research and development without which few enterprises can go forward. This assistance the Government have been willing to provide and indeed to initiate because it makes our industries more competitive in the international market.
The result of both these trends is that government and industry are moving steadily into an ever closer relationship. This is inevitable. I realise that this is a censure Motion which we are now discussing, but one would have thought that more of the Opposition time would be more usefully spent in trying to see how this relationship could be improved in the future. But we have heard nothing but sheer destructive criticism, and perhaps this is inevitable. What is also inevitable is that the fate of an industrial nation is inextricably bound up with the conduct of individual industries. This means that not even the United States dedicated as it is to the idea of private enterprise can allow total laissez-faire. Government there has become actively interested in the way decisions are taken in industry.
There are four distinct matters which must be raised. First there is the moral question. The ending of the Beagle light aircraft business has brought into focus a Government's responsibility, when it

wholly owns a company, towards the company's creditors. We are delighted to hear that the Government have accepted full responsibility and the creditors will be paid in full. Beagle was a limited liability company and a receiver and manager took over in December. There is therefore no point in anybody saying what they might have done or might not have done if they had not fulfilled this obligation to the creditors since we now know the answer.
What is important is that the Ministry should now look at the whole relationship between itself and such similar companies. There will be other examples in which a Government supported company may go bust placing an obligation on the Government to say at an early stage what they intend to do. I am glad that a decision has been reached, but we should learn from it.
The second point involves the conduct of industrial relations. It was significant that it was only in the later stages of Opposition speeches that this matter was raised at all. The matter has been of great concern to this House and indeed hon. Members on this side have had down an Early-Day Motion on the subject.
I believe that the Government have passed the test well. There was a responsibility not only for finding alternative employment and to ensure adequate compensation, but we now know that a figure of £140,000 has been agreed. Although some hon. Members may argue for more, it is surely the case that the sum is as good as one could get from the best private firms. I repeat that on moral grounds and from the aspect of industrial relations the Government have passed a crucial test.
The third aspect I want to touch on is the company's marketing and production policy. In this direction the policy in relation to Beagle and similar projects will fail in advanced technology unless there is a determined attempt to provide a European base. There have been discussions in various European forums about how we can use our resources in those areas of technology where the resources of one country are not enough. This is an important question.
The British Aircraft Industry's difficulties in competing with the United States in large civil and military aircraft


are known. But the Beagle affair also showed that the economics of scale apply to light aircraft also. In some respects there is a parallel with Handley Page. Both firms designed what are basically good planes which could become classics. Yet both firms struck difficulties with new aircraft, which is not unusual. But neither company could overcome the cost of development snags.
How much more can a nation invest in R & D? It is necessary to remind the House that Britain is spending enormous sums on research and development. In the public and private sector we spend about £1,000 million a year which is two-thirds of the total amount spent on the Continent of Europe. Another comparison is, however, also relevant with Western Europe as a whole if we include E.E.C. and E.F.T.A. countries which spent about a quarter of the sums spent by the United States on research and development. It is clear that the scale of science and technology is becoming increasingly complex, uncertain and expensive. Whether it is the Beagle or one of the many industries which have yet to be exploited, time and time again we shall come back to the problem that it is quite unrealistic for a manufacturer or the Government of any country in Europe to imagine that it is possible to go it alone. It was always very doubtful whether it could be done with a traditional industry, but certainly it is not possible now. That means that we have to look to Europe not only in terms of the possible market but also in terms of how we can collaborate across national boundaries and so spread the enormous costs of research and development in building up an industry.
With the increasing number of links between the Government and industry, it is vital that the information supplied to Ministers is founded on reality. I accept what my right hon. Friend said in taking full responsibility for the decision. He has been frank with the House, and one respects that. It is only fair to say that, and it is by no means a criticism or an attempt to reintroduce that argument that I would like to try and explore the basis of information within the Ministries. I would like to know who was responsible for advising the Government that Beagle would be profitable in 1972. What

information system has the Minister established to incorporate the best expert advice from industry? Is there any truth in the allegation made by the hon. Member for Leicester, South-West, that a top-heavy management structure was created after the Government took over which killed the previous initiative. I hope that my hon. Friend will explore this point when he replies to the debate and that he will be able to satisfy us that there is no truth in that last allegation. It may be that there were a variety of problems in the management of the organisation, but this is a very serious allegation which requires an answer.
The quality of information and advice given to the Government on industriai matters is crucial. Most of their advice comes from the Civil Service, but a good deal of it comes from industry, usually via the C.B.I. Perhaps because of the traditional hostility between industry and the Labour Party, it should not be relied on too heavily. Nor can it be said to reflect the views of industry as a whole. The Government should make a greater effort to discover the views of those who will be affected by a measure. It is rather like the example of the chemical manufacturer who claimed that the cost of accounting for every drop of a chemical imported in bulk in order to claim an export rebate virtually outweighed the amount of the rebate. It is to be hoped that such complaints can be avoided.
By making the Ministry of Technology responsible for virtually all their dealings with industry, the Government have tackled the question of the basic structure. Time that was previously wasted discovering which of several Ministries to deal with should now be used to get on with the job. However, there is now the question of the way in which decisions are taken within the Civil Service, and I hope that the Government will look at this. The Fulton Report attempted to show what was wrong with the Service. Perhaps the experience and range of industrial competence in the Civil Service is too limited. Too few civil servants are trained managers, and the specialists do not carry the weight of authority that their expertise entitles them to. In addition, there is too little movement of personnel between the Civil Service and outside employers, and too little contact with the community.
A start has been made to remedy the defects. The structure of the Civil Service is under review, and training techniques are being changed. The Fulton Committee's recommendation that modern management techniques such as organisation and methods and management by objectives should be applied to the work of departments is being followed up.
This is not a drift from the main point of the debate. The Government and industry are coming closer together. I accept my right hon. Friend's criticism that the Opposition may make their weekend speeches implying a rather depressing state in relationships between the Government and industry and suggesting a new form of capitalism which may be civilised or Central Office. However, the fact remains that the partnership is quite firmly wedded, and I do not see any change of policy here, even if there is a change of Government. It is not only humbug but completely dishonest, and my right hon. Friend is entitled to an answer to this question from the Front Bench opposite.
The Beagle Company experience is a tragic one. Both the Government and industry must take it to heart because there are likely to be many more examples of firms supported or sponsored by the Government. Unless there is a clear commitment by the Government as to what they intend to do, and how far they will back a firm, they will make a mockery of their obvious good intentions and the nation's resources.

5.46 p.m.

Mr. Julian Amery: I have a constituency interest in this debate in that a number of my constituents are employees of the company and one or two of them are creditors of it. As far as they are concerned, some progress has been made since we last debated this subject on the Consolidated Fund Bill, and I welcome that. There is also a problem concerning Shoreham Airport. However, I will write to the Minister about that rather than delay the House now.
I have a personal interest in the matter, though not in terms of money. Apart from the Concorde, this is the last of the aircraft projects which I helped start to have fallen into the holocaust for which the right hon. Gentleman and his pre-

decessors have been responsible. It is the fourth or fifth major cancellation that we have experienced at their hands.
I agree with the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Moonman) in one respect. This is not an ideological debate. Anyone who has been mixed up with the aviation industry knows that the private sector and the public sector are inextricably interlinked in all that goes on in aviation. Whether as a customer or as the provider of launching costs, the Government are bound to play a great part.
The right hon. Gentleman put up something of a smokescreen in fastening on to one or two sentences in the peroration of my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) and suggested that we on this side were turning this debate into an ideological one. It must be stressed that we are not, because this is a practical and straightforward issue.
What happened was that Pressed Steel came to the conclusion in 1966 that it could not carry on any longer. The Government faced a challenge: should they let the light aircraft industry go by the board, or should they try and rescue it? It was a big issue, and not an easy one to resolve.
I do not know what private advice they received. The Plowden Committee said that the light aircraft industry was one in which Britain could go it alone. The hon. Member for Billericay was exaggerating when he suggested that we could not. However, I have usually found the Plowden Committee's advice to be wrong. Nevertheless, there was a very strong case for going to the support of Beagle, and the Government decided to do it.
It must however have been clear from the beginning that the Government were taking on quite a big operation. As the right hon. Gentleman says, the American industry controls more than 90 per cent. of the world's light aircraft market. Anyone going out to shoot elephant does not equip himself with an airgun. Similarly, anyone preparing to take on the American light aircraft industry should be willing to go quite a long way and to put a good deal of money into it. It might be said that it is quite possible to kill an elephant by getting an airgun pellet


through its eye. However, anyone trying that and missing gets nowhere.

Mr. Burden: My right hon. Friend will agree, I am sure, that when assessing the situation it had to be clear that Beagle could put an aircraft on the world market which would more than compete with any product that came out of Beech or Cessna or any other American company.

Mr. Amery: My hon. Friend has a good point. From what I saw of Beagle products, they were very good. They might well have produced the right solution.
In passing judgment on the Government, three possible hypotheses face us. It is conceivable that the right hon. Gentleman went into this thinking that the small amount of capital provided was enough to win the battle against the American giant. If he thought that, he is not worthy of the office that he holds. I pay him the compliment of not believing that he thought the initial sums authorised by Parliament and by his Ministry were sufficient to win that battle.
It may be that in the course of fighting the battle the right hon. Gentleman came to the conclusion that there would not be a break-through and that Beagle would never be able to compete with the American giant. If he thought that, that would be a respectable reason for withdrawing from the battle and admitting defeat. But that is not what the right hon. Gentleman has said.
On the other hand, it is possible—this seems the more likely assumption and the one at which the right hon. Gentleman hinted in his speech—that at a certain price—whether at £6 million or £10 million more, or whatever it was—a breakthrough could have been made and we could have placed ourselves back in the forefront of the light aircraft industry. If this was the case, the Government's justification for not putting up the extra capital could have been because it would have diverted necessary money from other more important projects. The Minister would have made a more convincing speech if he had been able to say that had we gone on with Beagle we would have had to sacrifice or forgo something else.
I should like to know whether the money saved is going into some other technological project. Are we to be given something else instead of a lead in light aircraft as a result of the cancellation, or will the money simply go into more unproductive Government expenditure on one form of consumption or another?
It seems that the right hon. Gentleman went into battle without enough troops. He went into a battle which he could only have won if he had been carrying with him the support of the Treasury and of his own party. He failed to carry the Treasury with him, and he seems to have forgotten the strange psychological complex which his party has against anything with wings.
On any hypothesis, this is a sorry story which deserves our censure. I do not say that it calls for the right hon. Gentleman's resignation. He presides over a large technological empire, and this is a fairly small item in it. But the Minister must not be surprised if his handling of it and his defence of it today diminishes whatever respect he still commands in the House.

5.53 p.m.

Mr. Russell Kerr: It is a personal pleaure for me to follow the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery). For our sins, we found ourselves locked in almost mortal combat in Preston, North not many years ago. This is the first opportunity that I have had since then to speak in the same debate as the right hon. Gentleman.
I was undecided when I entered the Chamber this afternoon whether or not to make a contribution to the debate, but two factors made up my mind rather rapidly.
The first was my right hon. Friend's reference to the redundancy settlement about which, as is fairly well known throughout the House, myself and a number of hon. Members undertook a fair amount of activity about two weeks ago on behalf of constituents and, in my case, on behalf of my trade union members.
The second reason why I thought I ought to make a contribution was the speech of the hon. Member for Leicester, South-West (Mr. Tom Boardman) followed by that of the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow), who, I am sure, has only temporarily left the Chamber.
The redundancy pay offer, to which my right hon. Friend made reference, is, according to my calculations—my right hon. Friend mentioned £140,000 as the figure that the Government were now prepared to make available—about £65,000 above the original offer that the Government had in mind and will, I believe, represent about £75,000 above the amount for which the Government were liable under the Contracts of Employment Act and also under private contracts of employment. Although I am not in a position to speak for the men concerned —they must make up their own minds about the offer—my guess, from a fairly intimate knowledge of the situation at the employment end, is that this will in general meet with the approval of the men concerned. The only comment that I offer is that, though probably adequate, it is a little belated.
To be fair to the Government, I am now persuaded that their original "parsimony"—that is the word used in an Early-Day Motion drafted by myself and signed by a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House—was partly due to a lack of precedents in this difficult situation. I am prepared to concede that the Government were without any firm guidelines about the way that they should react to the situation. I should like to believe that this development and this reasonably satisfactory outcome will enable them to have a precedent to guide their future course should there, regrettably, be another similar occasion.
I pay my tribute, finally, to a welcome flexibility of approach which the Minister of Technology and his colleagues in the Ministry have shown during the negotiations which has not always been matched by a similar attitude on the part of some of his right hon. and hon. Friends in other Ministerial positions.
I turn now to the remarks of the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield). I have seen him on a number of occasions in far more of a bulldog mood than this afternoon. He seemed at times—I mean no disrespect—a bit like a legal aid solicitor presenting his twenty-seventh plea of "Not guilty" for the day, his remarks by this time being amiable but rather uninvolved. I am

saying in a roundabout way that the hon. Gentleman's heart did not seem to be in his job this afternoon. Listening to the case presented by him and by other hon. Members, I am not at all surprised, because when my right hon. Friend came to the Dispatch Box, he made the most complete demolition job to which I have ever listened in the four years that I have been honoured to be a Member of this House. Indeed, I was tempted—though I am sure that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, would not have accepted the Motion—to move the Closure there and then on the ground that the House would be wasting its time. It is perhaps as well, in the light of the amusing speeches that we have had from one or two hon. Members since, that I was not led into that temptation.
The hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South made a most revealing remark when he said that, despite certain warnings which the Government had been given prior to the acquisition of Beagle in 1966, they nevertheless decided to buy Beagle. In other words, the hon. Gentleman was censuring the Government for having entered into this contract. I reflect how different the picture has been when the private aerospace industry has been out with the begging bowl for Government funds with, of course, no suggestion that the Government should take any equity. The attitude of mind in the two cases seems very different indeed.
I should like to quote, I hope with the approval at least of hon. Members on this side of the House, the remark some years ago of someone who is still a Member of this House, when he referred to the aircraft industry with its enormous subventions of public funds as being a classic case of "socialising the losses and privatising the profits." That is in some measure still true today.
I now deal with two remarks made by the hon. Member for Leicester, South-West, the first concerning the position of creditors. As the hon. Gentleman was speaking, I again reflected how very different the priorities of hon. Gentlemen opposite are when it comes to who shall come first as between creditors and those on the receiving end of a redundancy deal—the employees. The obsession of the hon. Member with the interests of the creditors, in marked contrast to the employees, led him even to misrepresent


the Minister's statements to sustain a pretty weak case—

Mr. Tom Boardman: Would the hon. Gentleman recall that I joined him and others in doing what could be done for these employees, and that I was probably the first to write to the Minister-about redundancy pay?

Mr. Kerr: I freely concede that the hon. Gentleman was pleased to join a deputation which I led to my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Ministry of Technology, at which what we hope will be a final agreement was informally announced to us. But my point is that, although the hon. Gentleman is not necessarily neglectful of his constituents' interests, he has revealed today for all to see that there is a massive priority in his mind for the creditors as opposed to the employees. That is my opinion: perhaps he will think about it.
He also criticised the Minister for what he called "boosting" Beagle Aircraft around the country for many months before the final crash. Would he, given the chance, have advised the Minister to go around the country "knocking" that company, so that he could make sure that it would hit the dust, so that he could remove all confidence from creditors, so that the employees would be living in a state of perpetual nerves during those months of crisis? Is that his idea of helping out in this situation? If it is, it most certainly is not mine.

Mr. Tom Boardman: Would the hon. Gentleman not accept that, if the Minister goes around inspiring the creditors with a confidence which is not justified, he has a duty to see that those creditors are paid?

Mr. Kerr: In dealing with the Minister's behaviour in regard to the creditors, the hon. Member has been most unfair today. The documents of what the Minister said on various occasions, notably in the debate which has been quoted, show that at no stage did he make remarks which could be given that interpretation. The fact that he was not then, due to the legal and other complexities of the situation, able to give precise information, does not detract from the fact that at no stage did he mislead the creditors or anyone else by any public statement. Indeed, his subsequent be-

haviour, fully emphasising that the creditors along with the employees are provided for, is a complete proof that the Minister acted with complete integrity and probity.
This to me has been the number one parliamentary squib of my brief parliamentary career. it is very much to the Opposition's discredit that we should, at a time like this, be wasting valuable parliamentary time on an effort which was absolutely bound to fall flat on its face.

6.3 p.m.

Mr. Stanley R. McMaster: We have had an interesting debate and every hon. Member who has spoken has clearly criticised the actions of the Government and the Minister. I look forward to seeing the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) in the Lobby with us. He was critical of the Government for pulling out now, and this critical line has been followed by several other hon. Members.
The Minister criticised the Opposition for raising this subject today. The future of the British light aircraft industry since the Government's decision to support the Beagle Aircraft Company lies in rapid development. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley), when Minister of Aviation, pointed out in 1966 that this was a rapidly growing part of the world market and that Britain should play her part in it. It is no function of Government ordinarily to intervene in private industry. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree that Governments are not geared to run industry efficiently. Owing to the pressures through this House, they often make the wrong decisions in spending money and in the interests of the country.
But there are certain exceptions to this general proposition in defence and the international sphere, in which industries in this country face unfair competition from overseas firms which, directly or indirectly, are receiving some Government assistance or, in the case of the aviation industry, where their competitors are supported by substantial defence programmes which help with their research and development.
In all these cases, it is legitimate for the Government, in order to maintain industries essential to our economic welfare or defence or the development and


progress of technology, to step in and assist. Examples are to be found not only in aircraft manufacture but in shipbuilding and in other vital national industries in which both Conservative and Labour Governments have assisted in the past. Also, benefit can be obtained by other industries from spin-off, which comes, particularly in the aircraft industry, from the know-how in advanced metallurgy, in miniaturisation, and developing specialised radio components. A particular beneficiary is the motor car industry. These are important, as also is national prestige, which indirectly helps —it is difficult to quantify—our export drive. These are the considerations behind the Government's decision in 1966 to intervene.
The Beagle Aircraft Company was formed in 1960 from the amalgamation of the Auster and Miles aircraft companies, which had a wonderful history in the manufacture of light aircraft and produced aircraft which could compete easily on equal terms with the products of either Beach or Cessna or any other American company. Beagle aircraft were tailored more than those of any other manufacturers probably in the world, to the needs of the customer. I have seen some of its products and they presented perhaps the best value for money in this specialised field which could be obtained anywhere. As I said, and as the responsible Ministers have pointed out both in Committee and to the House, this is a rapidly developing part of the aviation industry. Therefore I feel that it was quite right—and I do not think that the decision itself has even been criticised from this side of the House—for the Government to step in and support this industry.
The criticism has been in the way the Government have mishandled the aircraft industry, as indeed this whole affair of Beagle has been mishandled. But the actual decision to assist the aircraft industry has not been criticised.

Mr. Benn: The hon. Gentleman will recall that his party voted against the acquisition and support of Beagle, and that he put a Question to me on 6th May, 1968, asking if I would merge Beagle with Shorts. Therefore the voices that have been sounding to us from hon. Gentlemen opposite have been somewhat mixed.

Mr. McMaster: I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his research on this subject, but I come back to my proposition that the burden of our criticism —I also have gone through the OFFICIAL REPORTS of the previous debates— rests on two grounds; first, the mishandling of the Government's assistance to the aircraft industry and, secondly, their refusal to give full information to the House when the subjects were raised at Question Time or in debate. I do not want to go into this at length. It is on the records and I have with me various extracts to support what I have said.
Having decided to take over Beagle in 1966 and put in £6 million or £7 million of the tax payers' money, the whole project has suffered from the economic stringency with which this country has been faced during the past four or five years of Labour mismanagement. The Government's economic theories in such matters as the high tax on petrol, the lack of support for private light flying and the lack, in the wider sphere of financial growth, as forecast in the National Plan and in the election promises of the party opposite, have made it very difficult for Beagle to manufacture and sell their aircraft here in Britain. This, I hope, will be only a temporary phase, until the election comes, and I hope it comes sooner rather than later. Then the growth of the country will be resumed along the lines which pertained up to 1964, and then there will be an expanding wide market in the field of light aviation as indeed the Ministers themselves forecast when they took over Beagle, and here there will be a place for a company like Beagle.
What is required at this moment?—a little bridging finance. My right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) said that having decided to support Beagle, having already spent some £6 million or £7 million, then surely the Minister should have just a little more courage. Some kind of financial reconstruction might indeed be necessary or desirable. But to have cold feet at this moment illustrates that the Government should not have gone into the project at all in the first instance, or once they had gone in and had put so much public money in then they should carry it out to its logical conclusion and


enable Britain to retain her stake in the manufacture of light aircraft.

Mr. Lubbock: I am seriously puzzled by this debate. I would like to know what is the official policy of the Conservative Party, because the hon. Gentleman the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) said the one thing he was not criticising was the decision to pull out in the end. I gather the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion is saying still that the Minister should have the courage of his convictions and put in another £6 million or £7 million. Which one is the official Conservative policy?

Mr. McMaster: I cannot answer that, not being on the Front Bench. I think I am entitled, as many back bench Members are, to have my own independent and free opinion on these matters. The Motion is quite straightforward:
That this House regrets the mishandling by Her Majesty's Government of the Beagle Aircraft Company".
So far as I can see, every hon. Member who has spoken, with the exception of the Minister, has supported that Motion. We might have different reasons for supporting it. But nevertheless mishandling there has been. Whether or not the Government should have taken on Beagle is a matter for some debate. I think that they should have assisted Beagle. Certainly, having spent some £6 million or £7 million, I feel it is totally wrong to have pulled out at this stage. I feel that the enterprise has been bungled, that we must show more courage and confidence in the future of the aircraft industry of this country. Therefore, for this reason I feel that hon. Members who have spoken on both sides of the House should support this Motion.

6.17 p.m.

Mr. Austen Albu: The hon. Gentleman referred to bridging finance, but my experience of the last few years, and especially during the period of the tenure of office of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery), has been that bridges of this kind often become very long and develop into expensive roads. I happen to have been in Government, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Jay), at the time these decisions were being discussed. As the right hon. Gentleman the Member for

Brighton, Pavilion said, we inherited the crisis, as it were, from the Conservatives. I am not blaming them for that, but the point is the situation was developing at that time. It was an extremely difficult decision to make.
During the periods of light rather than heat during this debate, hon. Members on both sides have recognised that this is an extremely difficult problem. It is said the Government started with a great desire to nationalise the company. Of course, this is talking absolute nonsense. The truth was, despite what has been suggested by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden), nobody wanted to take it over, and it was not possible for us to find anybody else to carry on the company. The Government were anxious to carry out the Plowden recommendation on the light aircraft industry. As my right hon. Friend said, it is not so much a very advanced technological type of aircraft as one which requires large-scale production, and, therefore, a long time to bring into the market. Certainly we took, if I remember rightly, the best advice we could of market possibilities, but it is now clear that the estimates we accepted at the time were over-optimistic. My hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Moonman) said that more sophisticated methods would have helped. My right hon. Friend will be aware that the Government of the day were responsible for the decision.
However technically good the aircraft may be, I cannot help feeling myself that there must have been, somewhere or other, a failure in management. This is something, of course, that Governments have always a great difficulty about when they are trying to support an enterprise, whether a private company or public company. They have great difficulty in ensuring that the management of the enterprise is good enough; and certainly production and management weaknesses are not unknown in the aircraft industry, or in other branches of engineering.
In my opinion, the latest N.E.D.C. Report on machine tools is absolutely disastrous. Good management is as much a problem for Government as for private industry. The Government made an attempt to save this firm and to save the industry for Britain. But in all enterprises a time has to come when decisions to stop have to be made. I believe one


of the failures of the Conservative Administration, particularly in this field, was that they were unable to come to a decision as to when to stop. It is equally difficult to decide when to start. I believe probably the Government has taken the right decision in this case. But to suggest this is an occasion calling for a censure, I have never heard a weaker one in my life.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. Terence L. Higgins: This has been in many respects a fascinating debate, and I wish at the outset to comment on the remark of the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Albu) that there have been shades of light while some heat has been generated on certain aspects. We are censuring the Government because we have not the slightest doubt that if sufficient light had been shed on this whole issue the amount of heat that would have been generated would have been very great indeed.
One must, in considering this matter, study what was said in earlier debates. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) hit the nail on the head on Second Reading of the Industrial Expansion Bill when he said that the Measure should be re-titled a Bill to lend and often lose the money of the taxpayer. Fundamentally, this has been the story of the Beagle affair.
It is common ground on both sides that this is not a debate involving ideological claims for or against nationalisation or Government intervention. There is no question of natural monopolies being involved or questions of the commanding heights of the economy. We are concerned with the question of commercial judgment and efficiency.
As the Minister rightly said, Beagle is in a peculiar area and there is no real question of our approaching the frontiers of knowledge. This is, therefore, merely a question of whether or not the Government should try to save a particular industry. In this instance, the Government said, in effect, "Private industry is not prepared to take the risks involved in this area. Private industry does not believe that it can make a profit. We believe that we can". This was, therefore, essentially a matter of commercial judgment, and the events which we are now debating make it absolutely clear

that the commercial judgment of the Minister has been appallingly bad. We censure him for this.
I wish to emphasise that we are censuring the Government, first, because when we debated the matter in Standing Committee the Minister did not provide the information which was necessary for the Committee and Parliament to make a reasonable judgment of whether the risks involved were justifiable and whether the House would be right to support the project.
Our first charge, therefore, is that the right hon. Gentleman refused to give us information which he had—or, at any rate, information which he said he had —although we still do not know whether or not he had that information, a subject to which I shall return.
Secondly, we believe that, even on the information which he had, he made a grave error of judgment, and that is the reason why a large sum of the taxpayers' money has been completely wasted. The Minister rightly said that he must take responsibility for this. I agree, and the sums involved are considerable. In other words, if his judgment in matters of this kind cannot be relied upon to be right, can we possibly rely on his judgment over such matters as the Concorde? It is on these grounds that we rest our case.
A number of subsidiary points arise. Once the decision to withdraw was made, it was clear that there was absolutely no contingency plan whatever either to cope with the question of redundancies or with the question of unsecured creditors. But the Government must have known for a considerable time that this situation was likely to arise. They must have known for some time that they would have to consider whether or not to go on with this project. It is our contention that the matter was completely mishandled, and that is another reason why we censure the Government.
The financial side of this matter is complex. Let us consider, first, if the Government were wrong to get involved in this matter in the first place. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) pointed out that the Government went for a considerable time—indeed, for about two years—without any clear parliamentary authority for what they did. They then


introduced a provision into the Industrial Expansion Bill, and in Committee we examined the matter as closely as we could.
On that occasion we raised a number of cogent points. For example, we asked how much it was thought the Government should pay for Beagle. The question of the valuation of the assets was discussed at considerable length. We never got to the basis on which the assets had been valued and on which the price which the Government paid for Beagle had been calculated. We still do not know what that basis was.
The Minister claimed that he gave lots more information than had been given previously, but on that occasion he was less than frank with the Committee. The basis for valuation purposes for the purchase price was never put before the Committee or Parliament. There was, therefore, great confusion on that score.
The Minister said in Committee that it was a risky business and that reasonable figures had been given. I pointed out that presumably discounted cash flow calculations had been made and that, as there was not expected to be any profit until 1972, it was reasonable to discount the future profits heavily. I asked for figures, but no reasonable figures on this basis were produced. For this reason I claim that he was less than frank with the Committee.
The crucial point surrounds the question of risk. On 14th March, 1968, I asked the Minister in Committee about these figures and I said:
… the hon. Gentleman has given only one figure. On the sensitivity analysis, what range are we to be given? It is no good the hon. Gentleman saying that we have to do it on a sensitivity basis. This is not what the figures which he has given represent." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E, 14th March, 1968; c. 376.]
In less technical jargon, we were asking for a range of figures; the most optimistic and the lowest figure which it was thought would be most likely to apply. Although the Minister claimed that he was frank with hon. Members, he did not produce those figures. I therefore ask tonight if the events which have taken place were inside or outside the limits, and which, presumably, the Minister must have calculated before he decided to take the risk.
The situation which we are now facing has come to pass after a matter of only 18 months. We were asked to consider putting in about £6·5 million. This, we were told, would carry the project through to 1972. Yet after only 18 months the whole of that sum has, it appears, been used. Is that so? If it is not, and if we needed twice as much as the Minister said we needed only 18 months ago to create a break-even point—three years further on than he originally said—what kind of commercial judgment has this been?
It is clear that the Minister did not give us the figures and that his commercial judgment, based on the figures which he said he had, must have been faulty. That must be so if we are faced with this position. Again, I have no doubt that we are right to censure the Government in this way.
In Standing Committee on 14th March, 1968, I said:
The hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) pointed out that this was not a board meeting. That is true, and some hon. Members might think that this is unfortunate. Nevertheless, if the Government are to finance projects which are essentially business, but also risk, projects, we, as guardians of the tax payers' money, must seek to get the correct figures. Many of the figures given today do not add up."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. Standing Committee E, 14th March, 1968; c. 399.]
It is not surprising, since those figures do not add up, that we are faced with the present situation, which can only be described as a fiasco for the Minister and the Government. We do not take pleasure in censuring them over this. It is not pleasurable for us to say "We told you so" when so much of the taxpayers' money has gone down the drain. We censure them because this matter must be examined and because they need censuring over it.
Another point which bears examination is the whole question of the Government changing their mind. The Government have put up a considerable smoke-screen, notably in another place where, on 19th February last, the Minister responsible said:
In the autumn of 1969 the board of Beagle came to the conclusion that if the company was to obtain a commercially viable future a wider product range, including new designs of twin-engined aircraft, would have to be developed and sold."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 19th February, 1970; c. 1325.]


If that is so, is it the same family of aircraft that we were discussing in Committee? Even then, it is no excuse for cancelling the project after only 18 months. However, if it is a totally different family of aircraft, one must ask what has happened to the first family which the Minister was so keen to back only 18 months ago. This is very good as a smoke-screen. It conceals the real point, but it does not help us to find out what the Government were really up to.
This raises the crucial question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) concerning the content of the approved programme of work. Did this include one family—if there is only one family—or did it include two families? I hope that the Minister, for the sake of his reputation will place in the Library a copy of the approved programme of work so that we can see clearly what was actually agreed, because the House is in the dark about this.
I turn to the actual way in which the project was to be financed. The Minister tells us that the matter was approved by the House, but the fact is that the House was told that the matter would be financed partly by an issue of shares up to £2 million and partly by bank loans of £½ million. But the fact is, as I understand it—and it has been very difficult to get at the details from the registry and so on—that only £1 million worth of shares were actually issued. If this is so, why was it not carried out in accordance with the undertaking given by the Minister about the finances. He did not attempt to answer this in opening. He went on a great deal about other irrelevant matters, but he did not attempt to answer this specific question. I hope we shall have a clear answer from him when he winds up as to why, if in the debates in Committee we were told that shares would be issued for £2 million, only £1 million worth of shares were actually issued.

Mr. Onslow: I wonder whether my hon. Friend could tell me where he got the information about the £1 million, because I was unable to get any information from the company on this subject. Where did the information come from?

Mr. Higgins: I can understand my hon. Friend's difficulty, because I gather that

the file was not available in the company's office for much of the past week. It has only subsequently come to light and I was able at a later hour to obtain that particular information in preparing for this debate, though I understand that the shares were issued a considerable time ago, way back in 1968. Certainly it has not been the easiest thing in the world to prepare for this debate.
So essentially, whatever the Minister said during the Committee stage, it seems he did mislead the Committee about the actual method of finance. It looks as though the Minister has kept an extremely tight control on how much borrowing, as against the share capital it was promised, the company has been allowed to have. Perhaps the Minister could tell us how many letters altering the borrowing provisions were sent to the company at different stages. There are one or two placed in the Library, but could he tell us how many there were in total.
I turn to the question of the suddenness of the decision. It seems that the Government announced that they would cut the Beagle Aircraft Company off literally without a penny, as far as one can see, at very short notice indeed. This has resulted in very shabby treatment both of the unsecured creditors and of the employees of the firms concerned. The Government must surely have been able to anticipate this decision to some extent, because they were certainly keeping a very tight control on the borrowing, albeit very often retrospectively. That being so, why were no contingency plans made? It is true that the unsecured creditors are now apparently to get their money, but they went through a period of great uncertainty when they were far from clear whether they would get their money at all. At a time when there is a severe credit squeeze and interest rates at record level, it is a matter of grave concern.
As I pointed out in a question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer a short time ago, the credit-worthiness of the Government is jeopardised if a wholly-owned Government concern fails to meet its obligations on the due date, and this is something which the House should rightly censure the Government for, because the Government's credit-worthiness has been called in question.

Mr. Russell Kerr: It was never in question.

Mr. Higgins: It was in question. Many of those creditors had no idea whether they would get paid or not. I hope that we shall have a very clear statement from the Minister that, as far as wholly owned Government companies are concerned, those companies either are or are not to be regarded by those who may advance either goods or services to them as effectively Government gilt-edged securities. We cannot have the kind of uncertainty which has existed over this matter.
The treatment of employees has been raised both in the debate on the Consolidated Fund and during today's debate. Again, a tremendous amount of uncertainty was created on the spur of the moment when the people concerned could have expected that the Government would have anticipated their position and at least made some contingency plans in advance instead of having constant meetings. The delay of the Minister's Department in sending replies to hon. Members has been extremely great. I take only one case. I received a reply on the 9th March to a letter I wrote on 4th February regarding one of my constituents who had been declared redundant. The Minister took twice as long to reply as my constituent's period of redundancy paw. This is really not satisfactory if one wants to get a situation cleared up and clarified.

Mr. Russell Kerr: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not wish to be unfair. The matter was obviously under negotiation between the trade union representatives concerned and there can be no question of any one member receiving special consideration in this context.

Mr. Higgins: I understand that this kind of delay has probably been experienced by many hon. Members. The hon. Gentleman has not taken my point. This decision was taken by the Government on the spur of the moment without any anticipation. They must have been able to anticipate this and give some idea of what proposals they were making, but the fact is that they totally failed to take this kind of precaution.
Finally, I turn to the question of the total cost to the taxpayer which we are told is something like £5·98 million plus the creditors, whatever that total amount may turn out to be. This amount, there-

fore, has been spent in 18 months, and it was anticipated to be spent, as I understand it, in a period of four to five years. That being so, would the Minister please estimate what the existing value of the assets is, because there is a great deal of uncertainty about that? At least we ought to know what the scrap value is so that we can get some idea of what we shall get out of the wreckage of the Government's plans. There is considerable doubt about the value of the assets which depend on the renewal of the lease on the airfield, and in the negotiations which have been taking place with possible purchasers the situation must have been confused—unfortunately I have not the time to go into any detail—by the fact that planning permission was still awaiting a decsion from the Minister of Housing and Local Government about the hard runway.
There may be varying views about the hard runway because of the noise factors and so on. But I now understand—and perhaps the Minister will tell me whether I am right or wrong—that the Minister of Housing is proposing to reopen the whole question. His delay in reaching a decision must have created uncertainty as far as any possible purchaser of the Beagle Aircraft Co. was concerned, because without planning permission it would be very difficult for a prospective purchaser to appraise the viability of a new project. Has the Minister spoken to his colleagues, and what is the position about planning permission and his estimate of the corresponding value of the assets on the airfield? These are very complex questions. We have had a short debate, but I have no doubt in my mind that we are absolutely right to question the Minister on the many points which have been raised in the debate.
I do not wish to keep the Minister from replying for more than a moment or two, but the Minister in opening said that he thought that the gloom which we had expressed in Committee was justified. We did express a great deal of qualification, but I am bound to say to the Minister that I do not think any hon. Member on our side could have conceived that matters would have turned out as badly as they have done, or that he would have taken a risk which has now turned out to be as great as we believe it is. We believe that this business


has been mishandled from beginning to end.
The Minister did not provide adequate information in Committee, particularly with regard to the sensitivity analysis, to enable us to estimate the risk. The decision to close down the project has been totally mishandled. This is a very sorry tale, and I feel that my hon. Friends may well be right when they say that, for the future record, and to avoid a repetition of this state of affairs, the matter should be referred to the Comptroller and Auditor General and to the Public Accounts Committee for further investigation. At the political level, we think that the picture is sufficiently clear for us to censure the Government, and I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will join me in the Division Lobby this evening.

6.41 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Technology (Mr. Neil Carmichael): We have had a very interesting debate. The Motion of censure has not been fully made out, and one of the things which struck me is that some hon. Members, on both sides of the House, feel that the Government should have continued supporting the Beagle project and not withdrawn from it. This shows that my right hon. Friend was faced with a difficult decision about whether to support Beagle. My right hon. Friend has admitted from this Box that he was wrong. He made the decision in the light of all the facts that he had at the time, facts which he revealed to the Committee upstairs and to the House, and, with due respect to the hon. Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins), I say that the facts about the financing of Beagle were more fully exposed to the House than those about the financing of any aircraft project.
Considering the fact that Beagle was a company, set up under the Companies Act, I maintain that it would have been very difficult for my right hon. Friend to give any more information than he did. Would the hon. Member for Worthing want my right hon. Friend, when he is discussing a loan for Rolls-Royce, to disclose the trading figures of Rolls-Royce before a development grant was given? Would he want my right hon. Friend to give all the figures relating to Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, another commercial

concern, to be disclosed? I hardly believe that he would.
On the one hand, the Opposition are asking the House to censure the Government and, on the other, they are asking for a public inquiry. They are asking the House to support their Motion of censure before they have any solid facts On which to base it. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Why, then, are they asking for a public inquiry? Surely the one should precede the other?

Mr. Higgins: The position is clear. There are far and away enough facts on which to censure the Government, but it would be helpful, to avoid this kind of thing being repeated, if we knew all the facts.

Mr. Carmichael: The hon. Gentleman says that there are enough facts, but what are they? We have had two points of view expressed today. Some hon. Members think that the Government should have provided another £6 million. Others think that the Government should not have become involved at all. There is, therefore, a case for an investigation before putting down a Motion of censure, and if the Opposition had been acting properly that is the procedure which they would have adopted.
The Government wished to preserve a stake for the United Kingdom in the expanding world market for light aircraft, and Beagle appeared at the time to offer a suitable opportunity for this. We therefore agreed to purchase the undertaking as soon as statutory authority had been obtained to do so. The Plowden Committee's Report, which greatly influenced the decision taken by my right hon. Friend and the Government, recommended that the manufacture of light aircraft merited Government support. It took the view, however, that such help should be limited, and that the industry's progress towards self-sufficiency should be reviewed from time to time, and that if the objective of self-sufficiency was not being approached within a few years the case for continuing assistance should be open to question. It is important to note that the Government decided to carry on for a limited period, and not for all time, the affairs of Beagle to give Britain a stake in the light aircraft industry. It was not a question of taking the company over to run a complete light aircraft


industry which would never be profitable. It appeared that the company would be profitable.
The question of the purchase price of £1 million was settled in 1966, and was based on the net asset value at the time of about £1·475 million. That price accordingly reflected the fact that without Government intervention Pressed Steel Fisher proposed to put the company into liquidation. In other words, all the jobs would have been lost right away, and that answers the point made by the hon. Gentleman who said that the Government had let all the jobs go. The jobs were maintained for three years longer than they otherwise would have been. The net value of the assets taken over by the Government and transferred to the new Company in July, 1968, was £1·316 million. One million shares of £1 are held by, or on behalf of, the Minister of Technology, and the issue of a further 316,000 shares to bring the shareholding into line with the initial net asset value was interrupted by the appointment of the Receiver and Manager on 2nd December, 1969.
In view of the indefinite period of time between agreement to purchase and the obtaining of the necessary legislative authority, it was agreed that interest should be paid on the purchase price from 1st August, 1966.
Pending acquisition, the company was financed by grants from the Government totalling £3·3 million. The undertaking was eventually acquired in July, 1968, under the authority of Section 12 of the Industrial Expansion Act, and this had been debated at great length. Working capital since that time was provided by the Government in the form of interest-bearing loans, and the question has been asked why loans, and not equity? The facts are that it was subsequently decided to provide further working capital by way of loans to emphasise to the management, at all levels, the cost of providing capital during the years when the profits were small. To ensure that there would be cash available, payment of the interest was deferred until 1971.
A great deal has been made of what went wrong with the project. As the House knows, the American light aircraft industry dominates the world market, with more than 80 per cent. of all sales in the U.S.A., and American manufac-

turers are responsible for more than 90 per cent. of the total world production. Competition has become increasingly fierce and intensive in recent years, and any company outside North America is in competition with American firms offering families of aircraft, which allows them to offer the smallest aircraft at very low profit margins to tempt customers to buy the larger, and more profitable, aircraft.
The problem facing Beagle was thus basically one of scale of operation. The large sales required for profitable operation in world markets are difficult to achieve without entering the American market which is one's competitors' home ground. Success in this market demands technical quality to be backed by competitive prices, whilst at the same time price is determined largely by scale of production, and this demands heavy capitalisation.
As my right hon. Friend has explained, the board came to the conclusion in the autumn of 1969 that a wider product range was necessary, including new designs of twin-engined aircraft, which would have to be developed and sold if the company were to be able to look forward to a commercially viable future. The company accordingly put to us a revised programme which required at least £6 million of new capital over the next four years, and probably more later to build on the foundations which would by then have been paid. The Government decided, however, after very careful consideration, that having regard to the need to contain Government expenditure, there was not sufficient priority to justify the investment of further public funds in Beagle; and the company was at that time trading at a loss.

Mr. Higgins: As all these facts were known 18 months ago, why did the hon. Gentleman not read the speech he is now reading out 18 months ago?

Mr. Carmichael: These facts were not known then. It would not be the same speech, for not all these facts were known 18 months ago. I made very much the same speech in the Consolidated Fund debate because the facts have not changed a great deal since January.
It was certainly expected that trading losses would be incurred while the company's programme was being built up. But it was also thought that a cash flow


break-even point could be reached by 1972. The board estimated that the programme on which these expectations were based would cost about £4½ million, excluding the cost of acquiring the undertaking. But, for a variety of reasons, these estimates proved too low and the Government were faced, at the end of 1969, with a request for additional finance of £6 million, with probably more to follow.
There have been some criticisms of management. I dealt with this in my speech in the Consolidated Fund debate. Management itself is usually blamed when things go wrong, but, as sometimes happens, in this particular case it was a question of the market being much more difficult than had originally been anticipated. That is not an unknown or an unusual thing in a company in the commercial world. In fact, the management supported by the work force achieved considerable progress in the period following the acquisition by the Government. Trading losses were sustained, but we had always known that that would happen. It was made clear at the Committee stage of the Industrial Expansion Bill that the company did not expect to break even until 1972.
My right hon. Friend the Minister has explained his policy of allowing the board very wide freedom and responsibility of action within the broad prescribed limits. I believe the hon. Gentleman who opened the debate was very concerned about this. The monthly internal reports of the company's board were routine financial reports for the information of directors and were not intended or used as a basis of formal discussion between the company and the Department. As far as general financial supervision was concerned, it was explained to the Standing Committee on the Industrial Expansion Bill that it was never the intention of the Government that they should involve themselves in detailed questions of day to day management.
The finance director appointed by the Government in the period prior to acquisiton continued in office thereafter. The Government maintained a broad non-detailed surveillance designed to allow the management the greatest possible freedom of action within the overall financial limits. The hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) made great play of

my right hon. Friend's objection to publishing an approved work programme of the company. The hon. Member said that the company had asked for something in the neighbourhood of £10 million. I can say categorically that the new company at no time asked for additional money until it asked last November for the £6 million which we have been discussing.

Mr. Onslow: Would the hon. Gentleman state equally categorically that we may see the approved programme of work?

Mr. Carmichael: We will come later to the question of publication of approved statements. There has been some very understandable concern about support for aircraft in service. This is a very important point. I remain hopeful that rights to manufacture spares, etc. for existing aircraft will be taken over by some other company. A spares and support company will be required for the Bassetts for a considerable time and suitable arrangements will be made. The Liquidator is currently having discussions with a number of companies in this connection and is very hopeful that the matter will be settled without undue delay; also, there will be arrangements for spares for the Royal Air Force.
The question of possible loss of good will has been raised by a number of hon. Members. The Government deeply regret the disappointment and inconvenience that has been caused to customers of Beagle by the failure of the company. They recognise also the effort and enthusiasm of many who have contributed to the company. They did not lightly reach the decision to discontinue it. But, taking all these factors into account, the Government believe that the decision was right.
The question of the position of the Bulldog has been raised. A prototype aircraft is undergoing flying trials in Sweden, and I understand that it has proved itself to be an excellent aircraft. The Swedish Air Force would still like to have the aircraft and is still hopeful that some other company will be interested in acquiring the design rights in order to continue production.

Miss Bernadette Devlin (Mid-Ulster): Would the hon. Gentleman bear in mind, in considering the possible completion of this Bulldog contract, that Short


Brothers and Harland are particularly suited to this kind of work; and in view of the financial position in which Lockheed's find themselves, we might find ourselves short of work at Short Brothers and Harland if we do not do something about it?

Mr. Carmichael: The receiver for the company is open to suggestions from any commercial concern which has the ability to produce the Bulldog, and there is the hope that the design rights of this aircraft, which according to all who are acquainted with it is a very suitable aircraft for its rôle, will be taken over. If Short Brothers and Harland or anybody else wish to discuss this with the receiver, I am sure he would be pleased to give every possible help. The Government have invited suitable British aviation companies to consider whether they would be interested in producing the Bulldog to meet the current orders from Sweden, Zambia and Kenya.

Mr. John Hall: On a point of order. Could I ask that the loud speaker be turned up? It is quite impossible to hear anything.

Mr. Speaker: If hon. Members speak out they will be heard.

Mr. Carmichael: I am quite willing to accept that regional accents are not always "in" in this place. I have heard such complaints before, but people do understand me absolutely in the part of the country from which I come. The Government have been at pains to keep the Swedish Government fully informed of the position and the Swedish Government have expressed their gratitude for

the way in which they have been kept informed. There has been some talk of redundancy and severance payments and whether this was something which should have been foreseen. The question of enhanced redundancy payments was raised by one of my hon. Friends who was very active on the trade union side. This is not something which can be determined early in the process of winding up a company because negotiations are necessary. I am sure that the trade unions would be very annoyed, and rightly so, if the Government had merely come along and said, "That is it. That is what we said three months ago was to be the enhanced redundancy payment." I am very glad that arrangements have been made which have been helpful and acceptable to the trade unions.

The hon. Lady the Member for Melton (Miss Pike) raised the question of employment in her own area. The latest figures I have show that on 4th March there were 383 workers whose employment had been terminated, and 110 were still reported as unemployed at the employment exchanges in the area. This figure is a little misleading, however, since I understand that in the main redundant men and women are proving to be quite selective in the type of employment they accept.

Mr. Francis Pym: Mr. Francis Pym (Cambridgeshire) rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Question put accordingly:—

The House divided: Ayes 228, Noes 297.

Division No. 75.]
AYES
[7.0 p.m.


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Boyle, Rt. Hn. Sir Edward
Costain, A. P.


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Braine, Bernard
Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)


Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian
Brewis, John
Crouch, David


Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)
Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. Sir Walter
Crowder, F. P.


Astor, John
Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Cunningham, Sir Knox


Awdry, Daniel
Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Currie, G. B. H.


Baker, Kenneth (Acton)
Bryan, Paul
Dalkeith, Earl of


Baker, W. H. K. (Banff)
Buchanan-Smith, Alick(Angus, N &amp; M)
Dance, James


Batsford, Brian
Buck, Antony (Colchester)
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Burden, F. A.
Dean, Paul


Bell, Ronald
Campbell, B. (Oldham, W.)
Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos. &amp; Fhm)
Carlisle, Mark
Digby, Simon Wingfield


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Dodds-Parker, Douglas


Biggs-Davison, John
Cary, Sir Robert
Doughty, Charles


Birch, Rt. Hn. Nigel
Channon, H. P. G.
du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward


Black, Sir Cyril
Chataway, Christopher
Eden, Sir John


Blaker, Peter
Chichester-Clark, R.
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)
Clegg, Walter
Emery, Peter


Body, Richard
Cooke, Robert
Errington, Sir Eric


Bossom, Sir Clive
Cooper-Key, Sir Neill
Eyre, Reginald


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Corfield, F. V.
Farr, John




Fisher, Nigel
Lambton, Viscount
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Fortcscue, Tim
Lane, David
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Foster, Sir John
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Ridsdale, Julian


Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh(St'fford &amp; Stone)
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey


Fry, Peter
Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)
Robson Brown, Sir William


Galbraith, Hn. T. G.
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)
Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)


Gibson-Watt, David
Longden, Gilbert
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Royle, Anthony


Glover, Sir Douglas
MacArthur, Ian
Russell, Sir Ronald


Glyn, Sir Richard
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
McMaster, Stanley
Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.


Goodhart, Philip
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Scott, Nicholas


Goodhew, Victor
McNair-Wilson, Michael
Scott-Hopkins, James


Gower, Raymond
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest)
Sharples, Richard


Grant, Anthony
Maddan, Martin
shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)


Grant-Ferris, Sir Robert
Maginnis, John E.
Silvester, Frederick


Grieve, Percy
Marples, Rt. Hn. Ernest
Sinclair, Sir George


Gurden, Harold
Marten Neil
Smith, Dudley (W'wick &amp; L'mington)


Hall, John (Wycombe)
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
Smith, John (London &amp; W'minster)


Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Mawby, Ray
Speed, Keith


Hamilton, Lord (Fermanagh)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R J.
Stainton, Keith


Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Maydon, Lt. Cmdr. S. L. C.
Stodart, Anthony


Harris, Reader (Heston)
Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.


Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Miscampbell, Norman
Tapsell, Peter


Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Taylor Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Harvie Anderson, Miss
Monro, Hector
Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow,Cathcart)


Hastings, Stephen
Montgomery, Fergus
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Hawkins, Paul
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Temple, John M.


Hay, John
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret


Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Morrison, Charles (Devizes)
Tilney, John


Heath Rt. Hn Edward
Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.


Heseltine, Michael
Murton, Oscar
Van Straubenzee, W. R.




Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John


Higgins, Terence L.
Nabarro, Sir Gerald
Vickers Dame Joan


Hiley, Joseph
Neave, Airey
Waddington, David


Hill, J. E. B.
Nicholls, Sir Harmar
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin
Nott, John
Wall, Patrick


Holland, Philip
Onslow, Cranley
Walters, Dennis


Hordern, Peter
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
ward Christopher (Swindon)


Hornby, Richard
Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian
Ward, Dame Irene


Howell, David (Guildford)
Osborn, John (Hallam)
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Hunt, John
Page, Graham (Crosby)
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Hutchison, Michael Clark
Page, John (Harrow, W.)
Wiggin, A. W.


Iremonger, T. L.
Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)
Williams Donald (Dudley)


Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Peel, John
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Percival, Ian
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Pike, Miss Mervyn
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)
Pounder, Rafton
Woodnutt, Mark


Jopling, Michael
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch
Worsley, Marcus


Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Wright, Esmond


Kaberry, Sir Donald
Prior, J. M. L.
Wylie, N. R.


Kershaw, Anthony
Pym, Francis
Younger, Hn. George


Kimball, Marcus
Quennell, Miss J. M.



Kirk, Peter
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Kitson, Timothy
Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter
Mr. R. W. Elliott and


Knight, Mrs. Jill
Rees-Davies, W. R.
Mr. Jasper More.




NOES


Abse, Leo
Blackburn, F.
Crawshaw, Richard


Albu, Austen
Blenkinsop, Arthur
Cronin, John


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony


Alldritt, Walter
Booth, Albert
Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard


Allen, Scholefield
Boston, Terence
Dalyell, Tam


Anderson, Donald
Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur
Darling, Rt. Hn. George


Archer, Peter (R'wley Regis &amp; Tipt'n)
Boyden, James
Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)


Armstrong, Ernest
Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Davidson, James(Aberdeenshire, W.)


Ashley, Jack
Brooks, Edwin
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)


Ashton, Joe (Bassetlaw)
Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)
Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)


Atkins, Donald (Preston, N.)
Brown, Bob(N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Davies, Ifor (Gower)


Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)
Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)


Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice
Buchan, Norman
de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Delargy, Hugh


Barnes, Michael
Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund


Barnett, Joel
Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James
Dempsey, James


Baxter, William
Carmichael, Neil
Dewar, Donald


Beaney, Alan
Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Diamond, Rt. Hn. John


Bence, Cyril
Chapman, Donald
Dickens, James


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Coe, Denis
Doig, Peter


Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)
Concannon, J. D.
Driberg, Tom


Bidwell, Sydney
Conlan, Bernard
Dunn, James A.


Binns, John
Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Dunnett, Jack


Bishop, E. S.
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)







Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th &amp; C'b'e)
Lawson, George
Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Leadbitter, Ted
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred


Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Ledger, Ron
Pentland, Norman


Ellis, John
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)
Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)


English, Michael
Lee, Rt. Hn. Jennie (Cannock)
Perry, George H. (Nottingham, S.)


Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Lee, John (Reading)
Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg


Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)
Lestor, Miss Joan
Price, Christopher (Perry Barr)


Evans, loan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)
Lever, Rt. Hn. Harold (Cheetham)
Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)


Faulds, Andrew
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Price, William (Rugby)


Fernyhough, E.
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Probert, Arthur


Finch, Harold
Lipton, Marcus
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry


Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Lomas, Kenneth
Rankin, John


Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir Eric(Islington, E.)
Loughlin, Charles
Rees, Merlyn


Foley, Maurice
Luard, Evan
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Lubbock, Eric
Richard, Ivor


Ford, Ben
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Forrester, John
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Roberts, Gwilym (Bedfordshire, S.)


Fowler, Gerry
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Robertson, John (Paisley)


Fraser, John (Norwood)
McBride, Neil
Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth(St.P'c'as)


Galpern, Sir Myer
McCann, John
Rodgers, William (Stockton)


Garrett, W. E.
MacColl, James
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)


Ginsburg, David
MacDermot, Niall
Rose, Paul


Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.
Macdonald, A. H.
Ross, Rt. Hn. William


Gray, Dr. Hugh (Yarmouth)
McElhone, Frank
Rowlands, E.


Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony
McGuire, Michael
Ryan, John


Gregory, Arnold
Mackenzie, Alasdair(Ross &amp; Crom'ty)
Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.)


Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Sheldon, Robert


Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Mackie, John
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.
Mackintosh, John P.
Short, Rt. Hn. Edward(N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Gunter, Rt. Hn. R. J.
Maclennan, Robert
Short, Mrs. Renée(W'hampton, N.E.)


Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
MacMillan, Malcolm (Western Isle.)
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
McNamara, J. Kevin
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Harper, Joseph
MacPherson, Malcolm
Silverman, Julius


Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)
Slater Joseph


Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Snow, Julian


Haseldine, Norman
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Spriggs Leslie


Hattersley, Roy
Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfield, E.)
Steel, David (Roxburgh)


Hazell, Bert
Mapp, Charles
Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.)


Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis
Marks, Kenneth
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael


Heffer, Eric S.
Marquand, David
Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John


Henig, Stanley
Marsh, Rt. Hn. Richard
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.


Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret
Maxwell, Robert
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley


Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret
Maxwell, Robert
Thomson, Rt. Hn. George


Hilton, W. S.
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Thomson, Rt. Hn. George


Hobden, Dennis
Mendelson, John
Thornton, Ernest


Hooley, Frank
Millan, Bruce
Tinn James


Hooson, Emlyn
Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Tomney, Frank


Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)
Tuck, Raphael


Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)
Molloy, William
Urwin, T. W.


Howell, Denis (Small Heath)
Moonman, Eric
Varley, Eric G.


Hoy, Rt. Hn. James
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Wainwright, Richard (Colne Valley)


Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Wallace, George


Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Watkins, David (Consett)


Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Morris, John (Aberavon)
Watkins, Tudor (Brecon &amp; Radnor)


Hunter, Adam
Moyle, Roland
Weitzman, David


Hynd, John
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Wellbeloved, James


Irvine, Rt. Hn. Sir Arthur
Murray, Albert
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Jackson, Colin (B'h'se &amp; Spenb'gh)
Newens, Stan
Whitaker, Ben


Jackson, Peter M. (High Peak)
Noei-Baker, Rt. Hn. Philip
White, Mrs. Eirene


Jannar, Sir Barnett
Oakes, Gordon
Whitlock, William


Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Ogden, Eric
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Jeger, George (Goole)
O'Halloran, Michael
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Jeger, Mrs. Lena(H'b'n &amp; St.P'cras, S.)
O'Malley, Brian
Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)


Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Oram, Bert
Williams, Clifford (Abertillery)


Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Orbach, Maurice
Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)


Johnson, Carol (Lewrisham, S.)
Oswald, Thomas
Willis, Rt. Hn. George


Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)
Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)


Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Padley, Walter
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn(W.Ham, S.)
Page, Derek (King's Lynn)
Winnick, David


Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Paget, R. T.
Winstanley, Dr. M. P.


Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West)
Palmer, Arthur
Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Judd, Frank
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles
Woof, Robert


Kelley, Richard
Pardoe, John
Wyatt, Woodrow


Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &amp; Chatham)
Park, Trevor



Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)
Parker, John (Dagenham)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Kerr, Russell (Feltham)
Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)
Mr. William Hamling and


Latham, Arthur
Pavitt, Laurence
Mr. R. V. H. Dobson.

Orders of the Day — YORKSHIRE DERWENT WATER BILL (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Mr. Speaker: I have not selected the six-months Amendment standing in the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) and others. That non-selection will not affect the debate.
If the Question for the Second Reading of the Bill is decided in the affirmative the Instruction in the name of the right hon. Gentleman will then be called, but I suggest that the matter canvassed in the Motion for Instruction might conveniently be debated on the Question for Second Reading. If that course commends itself to the House, there could be a general debate, including matters raised in the Instruction, followed later by a separate Division on the Instruction, if this is desired, and provided that the Motion for the Second Reading is carried.
There is a suspension Motion on the Order Paper which, if carried, would enable proceedings on the Instruction, but not on the Bill itself, to be concluded after Ten o'clock.

7.12 p.m.

Mr. R. H. Turton: With very great respect, Mr. Speaker, would you reconsider your guidance to the House in this matter? The arguments on the Instruction which relate solely to the charging scheme are entirely different from the arguments against the Bill. The Instruction is a particular point under the Water Resources Act 1963. This creates a dangerous precedent in that respect. If one were to bring that argument into the general argument on the Bill—which is that of invading a national park unnecessarily—it would make the debate complicated and, I suggest, unduly prolonged.
I ask, therefore, that the short point on the charging scheme might be reserved from the main debate until, in the event of the Bill getting a Second Reading, it is taken by vote.

Mr. Speaker: It will be taken by vote in any case. What we have to decide is

for the House to decide, whether, if we have two debates, we shall not find them overlapping.
I would have thought that the reasons advanced in the Instruction might have been urged in the general debate. If the right hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friends wish to preserve the right to have a separate debate on the Instruction, however, by all means they can do so. The Rule is to be suspended for the Instruction at Ten o'clock. If the Bill does not get a Second Reading there will be no debate on the Instruction.
So far, 17 hon. and right hon. Gentlemen have indicated that they wish to speak in the debate on Second Reading, which cannot go beyond Ten o'clock.

7.15 p.m.

Mr. Eddie Griffiths: I rise with a great deal of pride in being associated with this Bill. It is of great importance to what I consider to be the finest county in Britain; namely, Yorkshire. To that end I hope that hon. Members from both sides of the House will listen to the arguments put forward and in all objectivity, rather than from a position of bias, vote accordingly when the time comes.
The Bill is promoted jointly by the Yorkshire Ouse and Hull River Authority, the Kingston upon Hull Corporation and the Sheffield Corporation to authorise the construction of works by the river authority for the regulation of river flows in the River Derwent and the River Esk for water supply purposes and the construction of works by Kingston upon Hull and Sheffield Corporations for taking water from the lower reaches of the River Derwent.
Very briefly, the principal river regulation works comprise a barrage consisting of sluices and a navigation lock at the mouth of the River Derwent at Barmby, between Goole and Selby, and a reservoir on the River Dove in Upper Farndale in the North York Moors, with intakes in the River Dove and Hodge Beck for pumping water into the reservoir to supplement the normal run-off from the reservoir catchment.
I would like to anticipate many of the points which the objectors to the Bill might want to make and give what I consider to be—and as far as my research


goes—authentic, responsible and technical reasons why there is no great substance in the vast majority of the objections which are likely to be mooted in this debate.
The Farndale Reservoir proposed in the Bill is on the same site as a reservoir which the Kingston upon Hull Corporation is now, by Act of Parliament, authorised to construct under powers conferred upon it by the Kingston upon Hull Corporation Act, 1933; as extended by subsequent enactments and, most recently, by the Kingston upon Hull Corporation Act 1952.
The position should be made clear: whatever happens to the Second Reading debate, there is nothing to stop the Kingston upon Hull Corporation putting in a reservoir at Farndale. All the land required for the construction of the reservoir, which was authorised in 1933, has been acquired by the Kingston upon Hull Corporation, and the statutory period for completion of that reservoir scheme will not expire until the 30th June, 1975. The reservoir authorised by the Act of 1933 is, however, a direct supply impounding reservoir of the type proposed in the now ill-fated Calderdale Water Bill and would have provided, for water supply purposes, a reliable yield of only 18 million gallons per day.
Since the days of those plans there has obviously been a great deal of progress in the technology of supplying water. It has been recognised for some time by the Kingston upon Hull Corporation that more effective use of the reservoir in Farndale would be made if it were available for use in accordance with the modern technique of river regulation by the discharge of water into the river at times of low natural flow in order that a constant quantity may be taken by direct abstraction in the lower reaches of the river.
This Bill is not a simple parochial Bill. It has very important regional connotations for the whole Yorkshire area. The proposed reservoir and sluices will make available 88 million gallons of water per day additional to the present yield. Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Leeds already take 25 million gallons per day of the present yield by their abstraction works at Elvington. Of the additional yield of 88 million gallons, the river auth-

ority proposes to make available to Sheffield, Rotherham and Barnsley 15 million gallons per day and to Hull 12 million gallons a day. This accounts for only 27 million gallons of the 88 million gallons per day, leaving a balance of supplies for other abstractors who might want to take water from those undertakers. Those other abstractors which, so to speak, are in the queue, include Scarborough Corporation, Rawmarsh Urban District Council, Wortley Rural District Council, Pontefract, Goole and Selby Water Board, and Doncaster and District Joint Water Board.
The Calder group, comprising the Calderdale Water Board, Huddersfield County Borough Council, the Mid-Calder Water Board and Wakefield and District Water Board, may also have to look to the regulated River Derwent to meet its demands. Rejection of the Calderdale Water Bill will certainly accelerate their needs. Those who took part in the debate on the Calderdale scheme and opposed that scheme should now feel relieved that discussions are at present taking place between that water board and the Yorkshire and Derwent authority to see that the alternative supplies of necessary water are forthcoming. Those who supported the Calderdale scheme can also feel happy because those townships which relied on that scheme are to be assured of their supplies.
I move to some of the alternative suggestions which some objectors to this Bill might put forward. I pay tribute to the amount of work that the river authority has undertaken and to the amount of consultation that has been undertaken. I believe that the authority has bent over backwards to meet any possible objection which might have arisen. Before adopting the Farndale Reservoir site, the authority commissioned its consultant engineers to investigate all possible sites to regulate the flow of the River Derwent. The consultants explored in detail the head waters of the River Derwent and its tributories, and reported on a number of sites which, from a consideration of contours and topography, could be regarded as potential reservoir sites. None of those sites, however, would provide the capacity available at Farndale. The only possible alternative was in the neighbouring Valley of Rosedale in the same


area, but the maximum capacity there would have been limited to 4½ million gallons.
The geology of the Farndale site is also more favourable than that of the Rosedale site. The yield from a smaller Rosedale reservoir would be much less than that of Farndale, and if a reservoir were constructed at Rosedale, the site at Farndale would have remained under threat of development for reservoir purposes. As demands for water supply increased there might have been a compelling case to have not only the Rosedale but also the Farndale development. If, however, this Bill gets a Second Reading and, after being duly vetted in Committee, becomes an Act, it is felt that the Farndale scheme envisaged in the Bill will not necessitate any reservoir schemes at Rosedale.
Another possibility which has been considered, and which opponents of the Bill might put forward, is the development of sources for taking underground water. The river authority is at present undertaking a full-scale investigation into the availability of water from underground strata, but it is not considered that any substantial quantities of water could be made available in this way, except in conjunction with surface storage, either for recharge of the water-bearing strata or by way of seasonal variation of the source from which water is taken.
A number of water undertakings and other abstractors in the water authority's area find supplies from underground strata, and, taking one year with another, the evidence at present available to the river authority points to the fact that no additional water could be taken.

Mr. Turton: Will the hon. Member explain why in the survey of water resources of the Yorkshire Ouse and the Hull River Authority, published in 1969, it was recommended in five instances that there was a plentiful supply of ground water resources available both in Hull and in the region of the Vale of Pickering, in the underground strata north of Hull, and in two other parts of those areas? When the survey made those recommendations, surely it must have meant what it said.

Mr. Griffiths: I was about to quote from the Water Resources Board Report, and I shall come to that in a moment.

The water which now percolates through outcrops of permeable rocks into the underground strata discharges by springs and percolation into the rivers and makes a significant contribution to the maintenance of dry-weather flows.
I come to the point made by the right hon. Gentleman about the recent report of the Water Resources Board. In paragraph 22 of its final report on the water resources of the north, the board comments that there are ground water sources in East Yorkshire, as well as in a number of other areas in the north, and recommends that some such ground water sources in Lancashire should be developed in conjunction with surface run-offs to help to meet short-term demands. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman was trying to make the same point, but the board concludes that underground storage is unlikely to make any substantial contribution in the long term to supplies in this region as a whole. If the right hon. Gentleman considers himself a greater expert than the Water Resources Board, I am sorry but I cannot follow his line of argument.

Mr. Turton: I think the hon. Member misunderstood my interruption. I was quoting from the Yorkshire Ouse and Hull River Authority survey of water resources in 1969. In that there are a number of recommendations all showing that there are large quantities of underground water resources available.

Mr. Griffiths: I shall not follow the right hon. Gentleman. He will make his point if he is fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker.
Another aspect of sources of water which has been suggested is desalination. The river board does not itself undertake investigations into the practicalities of desalting sea water, but the Water Resources Board thinks that water desalination is not likely to meet demands until the 1980s, or later.

Mr. Peter M. Jackson: I am very glad that my hon. Friend has admitted that desalination is on, certainly in the 1980s. Stage 2 of the Farndale scheme will come into operation in the early 1980s, and I understand that the third stage will come into operation in the mid-1990s. So will he admit that desalination could meet the need of the later phases of the scheme?

Mr. Griffiths: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point, but I am sure that he will have read the report of the Water Resources Board very carefully and have seen that the Farndale scheme is given absolute top priority by the board, and should not wait until the late 1980s. The board, which was set up by the Government of hon. Gentlemen opposite and has the support of the present Government, gave top priority to Farndale in that report. If we are saying at Government and Official Opposition level that we agree with the board but that in this context it does not know what it is talking about, that it is talking through the back of its neck, we must make our position perfectly clear. We cannot have our cake and eat it.
Some people suggest that a Morecambe Bay barrage could provide the water required. A preliminary study of the possibility of estuary storage in Morecambe Bay was published by the board in 1966–67. It certainly offers prospects of meeting the long-term future demands arising in the river authority's area. A feasibility study of the project is in progress and it is understood that the report on it should be received in 1971. But the water from this source would not be available until well into the 1980s. I hope that hon. Members will at least give the authority credit for not simply taking the easy way out without looking at all possible alternatives before embarking on the Bill.
I now come briefly to some of the consultations that the authority has had and the consideration that it has given to the people living in the Farndale area. It is right that we should state exactly what the authority has done in consulting the people who earn their livelihood in the immediate area.
The land required is 1,920 acres. It is already owned by the Kingston upon Hull Corporation, which lets it to a number of tenant farmers. The Ministry of Agriculture classifies the land as category 4, which is the lowest category of workable land. There are about 19 agricultural units, averaging about 100 acres. For many years the area has been under the threat of the reservoir authorised in 1933.
Some of the former pasture lands have already reverted to moorland. The river authority's officers have met most of the occupiers of the lands and have held two

public meetings to explain the proposals. Before promoting the Bill the authority gave careful consideration to whether it should acquire only such lands as were required for the reservoir and the associated works, but concluded that the best course for all concerned would be to acquire the whole area of land held by the Kingston Corporation for the reservoir at Farndale.
Out of the total area of 1,920 acres, about 739 will be required for the reservoir, including the site of the dam, the planting of woodlands for landscaping and the provision of a car park. It is proposed—and here we should give credit to the authority—that the remaining area of about 1,182 acres should be reorganised under the Farm Amalgamation and Boundary Adjustments Scheme of the Ministry of Agriculture to provide workable units for future farming on the lands around the reservoir. The new holdings would be offered to suitable tenants among those who would be dispossessed, and only if there were not enough suitable tenants would the holdings be let on the open market. A number of the present tenants wish to retire, and several of them already work outside the valley either whole-time or part-time. It is thought that if such a farm structure scheme is carried out only two or four families now wholly employed in agriculture in the valley would be faced with the necessity for finding employment elswhere.

Mr. John Farr: Will dispossessed owners or tenants of farmlands be given priority when the remaining farms are distributed?

Mr. Griffiths: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I was coming to that point. Only four homesteads would be submerged by the reservoir. After the formation of the proposed five farm units, there would remain a further 15 homesteads which could be sold or let by the river authority. It is proposed, however, that the tenants now in occupation should be allowed to remain in their present houses for so long as they wish at reasonable rents.
In formulating the proposals for a farm structure scheme the river authority is advised by a firm which has consulted the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Farmers Union, and has discussed proposals at personal meetings


with the farming tenants. It is hoped that the proposed reorganisation will benefit the local community and resuscitate agriculture in the valley, while the provision proposed for compensation will help those who wish to retire or set up in new jobs. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that when the scheme is set up the existing tenants will have top priority.
I would like to touch on some of the arguments about the scenic beauty of the countryside. It is said that setting up reservoirs in this way rides roughshod over people without consideration and without consultation. I would like to show the lengths to which the authority has gone in discussing with all interested parties the repercussions of having such a reservoir in Farndale. The authority has fully consulted the North Riding County Council and the North York Moors National Park Planning Committee in formulating the proposals for the construction of the reservoir, and the Countryside Commission and numerous local amenity and recreational societies, as well as the owners and occupiers of land affected by the scheme.
Neither the North York Moors National Park Planning Committee nor the Countryside Commission objects in principle to the authority's proposals for a reservoir in Farndale. In a letter that the authority received from the Countryside Commission, dated 1st July, 1969, the commission said that it had considered the desirability or otherwise of having the reservoir in the area; and concluded:
However, against this it was recognised that plans for a reservoir at Farndale were known at the time of designation of the National Park, and that there now seems to be an obvious need for it to be constructed.
The commission expressed the wish to be consulted on the details of the scheme in due course, and this has been readily agreed by the river authority.
The commission said in the letter that there would be
an uncharacteristic element in the landscape
in that there will be a reservoir there, if the Bill is enacted, which was not there before. But a number of people have expressed the view that a reservoir might even improve the general amenities of the area.
I quote from a letter to the York and County magazine of July 1968 written by Sir Martyn Beckett, President of Rye-dale branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, in which he said:
there is no reason why the reservoir, if properly handled, should not enhance this beautiful landscape, the only deficiency of which is the absence of any large expanse of water.
Hon. Gentlemen who are opposed to this Bill do not have to take the word of an industrial worker; they can take the word of someone who cares for these things. It is the intention of the river authority to do what it can, in consultation with the National Park Planning Committee and the Countryside Commission, to carry out such landscaping as is desirable to fit the reservoir and its ancillary works into their surroundings.
The authority has appointed as its landscape consultant Mr. D. G. Thornley, who for the last 18 months has been busy not only drawing up plans but consulting various interests. I quote from a letter dated 9th November, 1969, in which the honorary secretary of the Rye-dale branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England commented that Mr. Thornley had the necessary sensitive feelings about the beauty of Farndale, and said:
…if we must have a reservoir there, then he is the best man for the job of trying to fit it into the landscape.
I hope that hon. Gentlemen will realise that the authority has done everything possible to safeguard the interests of all concerned. As for recreational facilities at Farndale, the authority is still having discussions with interested bodies. It is apparent that there is a conflict of view. As to the operational requirements of the river regulation reservoir, no restriction is necessary on recreational use to protect the purity of the water. Having regard to the situation of the reservoir, in a national park, and to the interests of owners and occupiers of adjoining land, it is the present intention of the river authority that the reservoir should be available for quiet recreational purposes only.
I urge hon. Members to give this Bill a Second Reading. As they will know, since most have greater experience than I of this House, that does not mean that


we have signed, sealed and delivered this project. All that we shall be doing is allowing the Bill to go into Committee to be fully debated and investigated. In due course it will return to us for consideration when we would have the benefit of the Committee's report on the Bill.
I would point out to those who love the countryside that I was born amid scenic beauty, in the hills of North Wales. Some hon. Gentlemen might be rather surprised by this, but I was also surrounded by poverty. I believe that in preserving the best of the countryside we must always maintain or try to achieve a decent standard of living for our people. It is an inherent right for everyone in this country to be able to turn on a tap and get adequate pure water.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I would remind the House that many hon. Members wish to speak. I appeal to hon. Members for brief speeches.

7.45 p.m.

Mr. R. H. Turton: Early in 1942 the Fiftieth Division was in the Western Desert. It took over the Gazala position from the Polish Brigade. It was told that there was no water available, except for a little salty water from Tobruk. We had then as C.R.E. an extremely able engineer, Colonel Kennedy. He said that he did not believe that and he drove wells down in the Western Desert and we got clear water at Bin Watson in May, 1942. Unfortunately, a fortnight later the Germans drove us out of the position. They got the water and, even more unfortunately, Colonel Kennedy was killed in the fighting.
In the autumn of 1955 I was in Egypt. I was then the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and I was talking to the Minister of Agriculture in Egypt about the Asswan Dam scheme. I related that story about the Gazala position. I said. "I know perfectly well you would get all the water you want for Liberation Province by means of the water wells sunk in the desert." The Minister of Agriculture turned to me and said, "Oh yes, I know that is quite true, but if we did this Colonel Gamel Nasser would lose the glamour and the glory of the Asswan Dam scheme." That is very relevant to

this Bill, because there is here the glamour of a great engineering complex which is unnecessary and out of date now.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Bright-side (Mr. Eddie Griffiths) gave us, with two exceptions, a very fair picture of the Bill. What he did not tell us was the dates and times of the projects involved in the Bill. There are three stages in the Bill. First there is the construction of sluices at Barmby which will be ready by the end of 1973 at a cost of, roughly £750,000. Then there is the building of a reservoir in Farndale, a third larger than can be filled by gravity. That is to be ready at the end of 1976 and will cost £4¾ million. Lastly, there is the final stage, the pumping of water from Hodge Beck and lower down the Dove from underground rivers, bringing the water back up to the reservoir at Farndale. That will not begin until the middle 1980s and will cost £1½ million.
We have to get this clear, as the Water Resources Board did in its report. There are two separate projects, the sluices and the reservoir. As the Board said in its recent report, phase one, the building of the sluices, will yield 25 million gallons a day, while phases two and three in the 1980s, will yield 22 million gallons a day, making a total of 47 million gallons a day. Let me make it clear that I do not object, and I am sure that other hon. Members do not object, to the extraction of water from the river through the construction of the estuarial sluices. This is common sense, and I hope to make the point that we could get all the required water by this means. My objection is to the construction of the reservoir.
I have here 10,930 signatures to a Petition asking this honourable House not to give the Bill a Second Reading. Some come from my constituency, probably about 2,000, but the remainder come from such places as Hull, Scarborough, Whitby, Leeds—from places as far apart as London and Liverpool. Mostly they come from the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Mr. James Johnson: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House why people object in such places so far apart? What is their objection?

Mr. Turton: That is exactly what I am coming to. They object because it is a nature reserve, a National Park.
The West Riding area of the Ramblers' Association has written a letter as follows:
We have noted your fight to save Farndale from the threatened reservoir, and applaud your success in dealing with the Second Reading of the Bill. We would like you to know that you have the complete support of our 1,300 members in your fight. If there is anything we can do to help you to save this precious area please let us know.
The Yorkshire Dales Regional Group of the Youth Hostels Association says this:
Our regional annual general meeting have passed a resolution pressing for consideration of the above Bill to be deferred.
This is very important.
We do not object to all reservoir schemes on principle. On the contrary, we have welcomed the schemes which have tended to improve existing amenities, whereas the reservoir in Farndale would do much to spoil the character of the North Yorkshire Moors National Park.

Commander Harry Pursey: Does not the Kingston upon Hull Corporation already own the land and already have authority to build a reservoir? What is the argument against the reservoir? It is water over the ruddy dam. The Bill sets out to extend the area of the reservoir which the Hull Corporation already has authority to build.

Mr. Turton: The hon. and gallant Gentleman is correct in his ancient history, but not in detail. I should have thought that the hon. and gallant Gentleman would regard the 1933 Act as probably an unwise Act by the wrong kind of House of Commons, but at least by that Act those who lived in the area were protected and were given the first call on the water. This Bill does not do that, I am told. In 1933 we thought then of impounding reservoirs, have not we moved at all from that time? In the white heat of technology, this is not the right way to get more water.
To go back to what I was saying about the objections, Farndale is one of the few dales in England where the wild daffodils grow. The dam will drown one-third of the daffodil area and will possibly so change the ecology of the whole dale that no daffodils will survive. There will be the destruction of 20 farm hold-

ings. All the best land at the bottom of the dale will be taken away, and there will be only a bit of upland left which will have to be amalgamated. I know this area, and I have talked to the farmers who will be robbed of their holdings and inadequately compensated.
To make this reservoir, the whole scenery of the area will have to be changed. Moorland roads will have to be made into turnpikes, footpaths will be closed, roads will be diverted and a great 150 foot high embankment will shut out the whole of the upper valley of Farndale.
May I make five points on the Bill. First, I believe that long ago this House and this country should have tackled the problem of waste of water. There has been correspondence in the Yorkshire Post recently pointing out that this country was one of the few highly developed countries which does not meter domestic supplies. We encourage the waste of water. We use 2 gallons of water every time we flush our drains. Sooner or later the Government must tackle the problem of the waste of water. The whole basis of the Bill and of the report of the Water Resources Board is that we shall need 50 per cent. more water at the turn of the century if the Government take no steps to prevent waste.
Secondly, the Government should be encouraging rapid decisions on imaginative schemes for the provision of new water supplies: the Wash Barrage, Morecambe Bay, the Dee and Solway Estuary schemes, indeed the water grid linking the Tyne with the Tees and the creation of the Otterstone reservoir. Each of those schemes will produce eight to ten times the amount of water that will be provided by the Farndale reservoir scheme. It is said that the cost of desalination is high, but surely in this age we should be able to find the solution to desalination. Even if it cost 4s., 5s. or even 9s. a thousand gallons, it is economic sense, and that is what we shall have to turn to.

Dr. Jeremy Bray: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this is a rapidly developing technical field? A report appeared in the Financial Times only today of a new approach to the extraction of salt. The Americans produce a technical breakthrough almost every month, and


certainly by the end of the century, and probably within the next decade, we can expect major advances.

Mr. Turton: When I was in the Caribbean two years ago I saw what the Americans were doing in Florida, and it was thought that before the 1980s there would be a break-through in desalination.
The Farndale reservoir is unnecessary because the river authority could obtain all the water it requires to meet its deficiency by extraction from the river with the sluices. I agree with the hon. Member for Brightside that we must try to ensure that everybody has sufficient water. Table F of the report of the Water Resources Board shows that the Yorkshire Ouse and Hull River Authority will have a total net deficiency in 1981 of 40 million gallons per day. Therefore, the target for the promoters and the opponents is to provide 40 million gallons per day without destroying national parks.
I refer the House to the Yorkshire Ouse and Hull River Authority's survey of water resources. From Table 6, which gives river flow records, it will be found that the River Derwent at Stamford Bridge, which is just up the river from Elvington and Barmby, has a minimum mean flow of 64 million gallons per day.
In addition, as the Water Resources Board points out, 4 million gallons a day flow in at that stage from Pocklington, so there is a total of 68 million gallons a day. If the Barmby sluices are in operation all that water can be taken at that point. If 25 million gallons a day are allowed for as coming in for Sheffield under the two water Orders, that leaves an additional 43 million gallons a day. It is immaterial to us how that is split up between the different authorities in Sheffield or Hull, but that water is there and can be obtained, not in the 1980s, but by 1973 when phase one is ready. That could be obtained at once by Ministerial Order without the need for a private Bill.
If it is argued that Sheffield and Hull require more water than can be obtained from extraction at Elvington and Barmby, then I would suggest that they should use the ground water resources near Sheffield and Hull or, if

they wish to do so, the ground water resources in my constituency.
What are those ground water resources? Last summer the Hydro-geological Report No. 4 was published dealing with the ground water hydrology of the Yorkshire Ouse river basin. A table in that report gives an estimate of the amount of ground water resources and sets out the potential, what is at present tapped, and what is left over. Table 5 shows the difference between the potential and the abstraction and the amount available in the Yorkshire Ouse area is 775 million gallons a day.
The Yorkshire Ouse and Hull River Authority has also made a survey of ground water resources. It works out in table 9 of its 1969 report the amount of ground water resources available in its area. The river authority differs from the hydrogeological report finding, but by how much? The river authority's figure comes out at 766 million gallons a day.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Bright-side said that the Yorkshire Ouse and Hull River Authority thought that there was little available, but in document after document it has made recommendation after recommendation that we should use these ground water resources. How can the hon. Gentleman say that there is very little. The Water Resources Board report, in paragraph 22, skated over this aspect of the matter. I do not say that every man on the board is a wise man merely because the idea of the board was originated by a Conservative Government, nor is it right for me to try to vindicate the board for that reason alone.
The ludicrous point about the Bill is that it seeks to construct a great artificial lake of 8,000 million gallons capacity at a cost of £6¾ million which will lie on top of a great natural lake. Indeed, because the catchment area of the reservoir is not sufficient to fill it, the river authority itself suggests going down into the underground caverns to this underground natural lake and pumping the water up some two or three miles into a reservoir. This is the most abject nonsense.

Mr. John H. Osborn: Could the right hon. Gentleman say from what in his proposals the figure of 766 million gallons a day is taken and how it will lower the water


table? Is he certain that this is from boreholes? Diagrams show the existing rivers with water percolating through from the hillsides.

Mr. Turton: Some of the 766 million galons a day in the western area lies in coal measures which could not be used for that purpose. It is not my habit to talk about things of which I know little. I am speaking about that part which lies in or around my constituency which comprises this great natural lake.
When the Ice Age ended the snow and ice melted and came down into the vale of Pickering and made a lake in size some 164 square miles. Hon. Members will find this information accurately set out in the geological survey for that region. That lake was bounded on the north by the Cleveland Hills, on the west by the Howardian Hills, and on the south by the East Yorkshire Wolds, and when the lake was not covered there was a channel going out at Filey. That lake does not feed rivers but feeds the sea. This has been known for some time to geologists as well as to my constituents. This now lies on a bed of corallian limestone. The whole of the lake is untapped, except for 2 million gallons a day which my constituents take out at Ness and 4 million gallons a day which Scarborough Corporation at present take out at Irton.
The hydrogeological report estimates the ground water potential in the area as 164 million gallons a day, of which at present only 6·3 million gallons a day are being abstracted. Therefore, if the geologists are right, and they are the experts who have examined this matter in the last few years, 157·8 million gallons a day lie untapped waiting to be used.
The river authority has disagreed with that figure, although it was a survey conducted by the Institute of Geological Sciences and commissioned by the Yorkshire Ouse River Board, the predecessors of the river authority. It estimates the untapped ground water resources in these catchments at 76·7 million gallons a day, but whether it is the higher figure or the lower one is immaterial.
The Water Resources Board is saying that in 1980 there will be a deficiency of 40 million gallons a day, it agrees that 25 million a day is coming from the sluice at Barmby, and therefore it wants 15 million gallons a day. That can

be met from boreholes, and having done a good deal of this work, we know that the cost of a borehole and the necessary pipe to put the water from the pump into the river in order to regulate the river would be £30,000 for each borehole. Therefore, to make up the deficiency provided by Farndale in 1980, according to the Water Resources Board, it would require 11 boreholes at a cost of £330,000, instead of £64 million. Those are the facts worked out by the engineers.
It has been suggested that it will lower the water table, but how can that be? What we are doing is taking it up from an underground lake which is leaking out to sea and putting it in the river to regulate the river. It has the opposite effect, as the river authority recognises. It is spending £100,000 at Leeds University on research into this very problem. I understand that that research will be completed by 1973. Surely it is not unreasonable to ask the promoters, before they destroy for all time the lovely Upper Farndale, to await the report of the research which they have commissioned. If they are too impatient for that, why not sink a borehole to find it? After all, I speak from a certain amount of knowledge. Twenty years ago, we sank a borehole into the underground river at Ness and, as a result, nearly the whole of my constituency relies on this water from Ness.
I read a very interesting article in the Yorkshire Post which it is worth quoting:
Mr. T. G. S. Green, the river authority's water resources engineer"—
that is the authority by which the hon. Member for Brightside was briefed—
says that the abstraction of water from the sandstone could well make it unnecessary to construct surface regulating reservoirs or at least postpone the time when surface reservoirs have to be built. Use of the underground water could obviate the need for additional surface reservoirs for possibly 10 years.
That report from Mr. Green is dated 23rd February, 1970. It seems a very timely remark. It is a pity that he did not persuade the hon. Member for Bright-side that this Bill is unnecessary on the argument of the water resources engineer of the Yorkshire Ouse and River Hull authority.
From what the hon. Gentleman has said, I gather that Scarborough requires more water. But Scarborough already draws four million gallons a day from this


natural lake at Irton. If Scarborough wants more water, all that it has to do is sink another borehole in that natural lake. No one will stop it doing that. Then, if it can afford it, it can pipe a supply wherever it is required.
Sheffield and Hull are to extract from the Derwent at Elvington and Barnby. Has not extraction from the Ouse north of York been considered? It is interesting to note the river authority estimate of river flows at Skelton, north of York. Although the flow has been measured from 1956, all that it has been able to give is an estimated mean flow and not a minimum flow. The estimated mean flow at Skelton is 580 million gallons a day. I am interested in that because, as an hon. Member representing a constituency in that area which is constantly flooded, I would be grateful if some of the water could be taken away. If the hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) were here, he, too, would agree to a great quantity of water, which could be regulated, being taken from the Ouse down to Sheffield and, if necessary, Hull. We would much rather that it was stored there, too, than in my constituency.
I have been worried by one or two of the methods used by the Yorkshire Ouse and Hull River Authority. I was glad that the hon. Member for Brightside did not adopt any of the methods used in the Press in the last few days. On Friday, the clerk to the Yorkshire Ouse and Hull River Authority was reported in the Yorkshire Post as saying:
There are not as many people opposed to the scheme as one might think. The Council for the Protection of Rural England, for example, are not opposing us.
I thought that the hon. Member for Brightside was trying to insinuate that the Council for the Protection of Rural England was in favour of it. To clear up the point, perhaps I might read a letter from that body dated 4th March:
The Council for the Protection of Rural England regards the proposed Farndale reservoir as a most undesirable intrusion on the landscape of the North York Moors National Park and agrees with its Ryedale Branch (from whom you may have heard) that the scheme should not be allowed to proceed until alternative sources of supply have been further investigated. Among these we will include desalination and barrage schemes, in both of which progress has been disappointingly slow.
It was not very helpful for the clerk to go on record as saying that the Council

for the Protection of Rural England had no objection to the scheme. Certainly it caused a great deal of worry to those who are supporters of the Council when the charge was made that it did not oppose the scheme.
There was an even worse instrusion in the Yorkshire Post from the vice-chairman of the Yorkshire Ouse and Hull River Authority only on Monday. In a letter, Alderman Sir Harry Hardy wrote:
As a boy I experienced the breath-taking beauty of Farndale. I cycled to Gillamoor and enjoyed the unbounded hospitality and the delightful fellowship of the Simpson family at The Farm.
This Judas-like approach goes on:
Water from underground could reduce the supply of surface water.
That letter is from the vice-chairman of a river authority which has been spending £100,000 to research into these underground resources. Having just made that announcement, he says:
Water from underground could reduce the supply of surface water.
He goes on:
The hydrogen ion content of underground water may be unsuitable for human consumption"—
or for certain industries.
This is from a river authority which has known for 20 years about this natural lake and that the Ryedale Joint Water Board has been pumping water out of it.
I am afraid that there is a shadier side to this. In November the Ryedale Joint Water Board applied to the river authority for permission to sink another borehole at Keld Head to get another two million gallons per day. Although it applied in November, there has been no decision. It cannot get No; it cannot get Yes. However, it is told that it cannot be done because it might interfere with the fish hatchery investment of the river authority on the Costa. Is this really what is behind this attack on underground water resources—that above that natural lake the river authority, wisely or unwisely, has invested a certain amount of money in a fish hatchery? Is this why it is neglecting the easiest, cheapest and most modern way of getting water? My constituents and I think that it is dishonourable that we should suffer rather than that the fish hatchery should be moved. I believe that this is the secret behind what has been actuating people with the Bill.
I have been asked: why have not more people objected to the Bill? Let us get the facts right. The Ryedale Joint Water Board is the only petitioner against the Bill at this stage in the House of Commons. It is petitioning against it principally because it objects, among other things, to having its water stolen from it, its pipeline and its treatment works moved, and to the charging scheme which has to be settled in this House. But the North Riding County Council, the National Farmers' Union, the Kirkby-moorside Rural District Council and about 15 other authorities have reserved their rights to object in the House of Lords.
I apologise for the presentation of our opposition to the Bill. We have not been able to send round glossy pamphlets, because these 10,930 people are not wealthy. In this rural district the product of a penny rate is £354. To fight the Calderdale Bill the local rural district council was nearly beggared. There is something terribly wrong with this method of having to oppose, but there is opposition from all the people of Farndale amongst the many petitions that I have. Of the 100 people who live in the Farndale area, 98 have signed the petition begging the House to turn down the Bill.
I object to the Bill on behalf of my constituency, which will be ravished and drowned by the Bill, and on behalf of my constituents who will lose their farms and livelihood for inadequate compensation. If at times it is right that the few should be sacrified for the many it is certainly unusual to find that the few are being forced to contribute to the costs of their sacrifice. I believe that this sacrifice is unnecessary.
I have support for that view from those who instigated this petition. I know this area. I was born and bred in the hills just north of Farndale. This is a corner of England which is at present unspoilt. I know that if the Bill is passed tonight we will be spoiling this corner of England for ever for no good reason, because the plan is out of date and there are more modern ways for Sheffield, Hull and the West Riding getting the water that they require.

8.25 p.m.

Mr. George Darling: Until the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) got

towards the end of his speech I was very much in agreement with him. If this scheme had been to provide an impounding reservoir anywhere in Lancashire, Yorkshire or the North of England I should have opposed it as I opposed the Calderdale scheme. But here we have the right kind of proposal—let us forget the Farndale Reservoir for a moment, although I know it is difficult—because the water that will be taken for the benefit of industry and domestic consumers in the industrial areas of Humberside and the West Riding is to be abstracted from rivers. This is the right way to do it.
I have been perfectly consistent about this matter for many years, since I saw the original Yorkshire Derwent scheme that was undertaken by Sheffield. My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) was a member of, I think it was called, the waterworks committee of the Sheffield City Council. When I went to see that scheme in operation and talked to the water engineers, I was convinced that there was no need to go on impounding reservoirs in the North of England. As the right hon. Gentleman said, there is plenty of water on both sides of the Pennines, both underground and in rivers, that can be used to provide all the supplies needed by industry and domestic consumers.
The only difference between the right hon. Gentleman and myself is whether we should take the word of the water engineers attached to the appropriate authority that they require a regulating reservoir for this new scheme of abstracting more water from the River Derwent.
The right hon. Gentleman has quoted a number of authorities to show that there is plenty of underground water available. He has referred to a natural underground lake. I do not know whether the water is there or not in the quantity which he has said, but that is not my problem.
The right hon. Gentleman has said that the way to regulate the supplies which will be taken from the river is by bore-holes and pots. I do not know whether this is the right way. The right hon. Gentleman will understand that I am not trying to be rude when I say that I do not know whether I have to take his word for it. I am taking the word of the engineers associated with this scheme, who


say that there must be a surface regulatory reservoir. If that is so, where should the reservoir be?

Mr. Turton: I did quote the water resources engineer of the very authority which is promoting the Bill. He said that, if the underground resources were used, the reservoirs could be postponed for 10 years.

Mr. Darling: If the person concerned is associated with the promoters of the Bill, why do they say that there must be a regulatory surface reservoir? I must take their word for it. After all, the right hon. Gentleman is concerned about his constituents. We have half a million people in Sheffield whose livelihood depends largely on an expansion of the steel and heavy engineering industries there. They will require more and more water every year. I want to maintain their standards of living, and I want them to be much more prosperous, and I am sure that that cannot happen unless the natural resources on which their industries depend can be provided in full for them.
Again, we want social improvements, not only in Sheffield but throughout the West Riding. This calls for more and more water. In parts of my constituency, 60 per cent. of the houses do not have inside baths. If they are provided, they will use more water, and they must be provided. This is the kind of social improvement which we need. Therefore, neither I nor my constituents can wait 10 years for some guarantee that the water supplies they want will come along. So I will vote for the Second Reading, and I hope that the Bill will receive a Second Reading.
But I agree with the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton in this, that we must be convinced that a surface regulatory reservoir is needed to make this scheme workable and practicable, and that it must be at Farndale. I too dislike this way of considering Bills of this kind. I support the Bill for obvious reasons. I think that it is the right kind of scheme. I know that the right hon. Gentleman does not disagree with me in principle that the water is coming from a river rather than from an impounding reservoir, but he has legitimate objections to the scheme. He has to ask for a vote of

this House, of 630 Members—although not all of us will vote—but how many right hon. and hon. Gentlemen really understand what is involved?
If the principle is accepted that we do not build unnecessary impounding reservoirs, which I think the House should accept, we must discuss schemes of this kind—which we now accept in principle—in detail. Let us be honest: we are not fully equipped to do this. We should have committees to examine, with the help of conflicting experts if necessary, before we come to a matter of this kind. Anyway, we are stuck with the procedures which we have to adopt.
I hope that the Bill will be given a Second Reading, and that when it is considered these questions will be answered. Do we need a surface regulatory reservoir? If so, is Farndale Valley, taking everything into consideration—the natural amenities and so on—the right place for it? We must be satisfied on these points before the Bill is finally passed.
But, because I speak not just for Sheffield but for some three, four or five million residents of industrial towns whose livelihood largely depends, because of the nature of their industries, on an increasing supply of water, I think that the Bill should have a Second Reading.

8.34 p.m.

Mr. W. F. Deedes: As the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Darling) observed in a very fair speech, it is not easy to understand in full the sort of detail which we are discussing in this proposed scheme, although I thought that my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) showed a fair grasp of the matter not only in principle but in detail as well.
Although I shall be regarded as an interloper by the society of Yorkshiremen who are gathered here tonight, I intend to oppose the Bill because I have a profound affection for the Farndale Valley and a profound distrust for the pragmatic, hand-to-mouth water resources policy which we are now pursuing.
I have also some regard for our national parks policy, which cannot survive if we knock holes in it whenever it is presented that over-riding public interests make this necessary. I think I am right in saying that this will be the


third time that the national park which is constituted by the North Yorkshire Moors has been kicked in the teeth in this way. First we had Fylingdales, with over-riding considerations in favour of that. Then we had the boring for potash. Then we are to have this reservoir, 8,000 million gallons.
Always the most compelling need was made for these breaches. I would say it is a disastrous policy, not only for national parks and those who control them but in a sense for the Government as well because it leads to a cynical attitude as to how they behave when it suits them.

The Minister of State, Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Denis Howell): The right hon. Gentleman will acknowledge, I hope, that the policy which is being pursued is in pursuance of the Water Resources Act, which was the policy of the Government of which he was a member.

Mr. Deedes: I am coming to this point in just a moment. I am quite aware, as is the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Eddie Griffiths), that a reservoir was proposed here many years ago, before it even became a national park. Although he said it is the same site, he will agree with me that the size in question differs considerably from the size that was under consideration in 1933, and that is one of the points at issue.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton has already made a detailed case against this proposal, but has given in pretty fair measure the alternatives which could be pursued. I merely want to put forward the grounds on which I think a reasonable man, without the advantage of being a Yorkshire Member, might oppose the Bill.
Every time a reservoir of this kind is proposed, as we heard when the Calder-dale scheme was being discussed, it turns out to be a precious corner of England. Sometimes it is. I happen to think Farndale is. I am tolerably familiar with every site in England and Wales which is threatened with this type of flooding because I take a great interest in this. I hope that the Farndale Valley and its nature reserve will not be flooded. I have known it for 30 years, and I endorse every word that my right hon. Friend who represents it has put forward on its behalf. There is a touch of magic about the place, or there

soon will be when the miniature daffodils are in bloom. There will not be much left of that when 8,000 million gallons of water fill the valley.
On the national park point, I refer to a passage from the fifth annual report of the Water Resources Board for 1968. It says on national parks, referring to the Dartmoor scheme, but the principle holds:
We have not altered our policies with regard to national parks. We declared it in paragraph 96 in the 1965 annual report and we repeat it here. In view of the purposes for which the national parks were designated, there must be a strong initial presumption against any development which might damage their appearance or interfere with public access. We fully accept this. Indeed, there may well be certain areas which should be held against any development.
It goes on:
On the other hand, the total area of parks covers too much of the country to be regarded as sacrosanct from any change.
It concedes that there are areas which ought not to be treated in that way, and I would find it difficult to find a place which responds to that better than the Farndale Valley.
Since we debated Calderdale recently and in view of the result, I notice that the right hon. Gentleman has been flexing his muscles a bit, and he says there is, in effect, no alternative to this policy. His warning was that we must not look to larger and perhaps vaguer ideas outside the lines of present policy. Indeed, I understand that there is some talk—I hope that the Minister will refer to this—of amending the 1963 Act to save the promoters of this sort of Bill the indignity of rejection. Of course, people who promote these campaigns do not like rejection.
On the wider issue of studies, I have been looking closely at the stewardship of the Water Resources Board, and I call attention to the board's expenditure on research. In 1966–67 it amounted to £31,000. In 1967–68 it was £41,000. The estimated total for 1968–69 is £125,000, but as there was a shortfall on estimated expenditure last year, I doubt whether that figure will have reached above £100,000.
It is worth recalling that that represents the price of, say, 10 graduates or one-tenth of the amount that I.C.I. would spend in one division of its organisation,


Yet we are talking of research expenditure on our total water resources. We are, therefore, spending an absurdly small sum on what the board describes as something that will become an increasingly important part of its work; that is, research.
How far does the board use the research that is done by other people? I am not advocating a vast increase in the public bill on research, but it would be interesting to know what the board does with other people's research on, for example, desalinisation. Research has been, and is, going on into some promising spheres, such as the barrage concept. There is one barrage which could apply particularly in respect of this scheme. Is research being pursued with anything like enough energy and imagination? I fear that as long as schemes of this sort come before the House and as long as the Act permits them, research into these matters will be half-hearted.
We are really dealing with two resources. I accept what has been said about thirsty constituents; and, when it suits our book, we must support schemes which will provide natural resources for industry and, more important, domestic use. While I accept that water is a major requirement, we must not forget that places like Farndale are national assets and that there is a need for conservation in both senses of the word.
We cannot go on in this ham-fisted way, and certainly we cannot adopt schemes of this sort by taking a rubber-stamp attitude. We cannot go on wasting water in the way we are, neglecting serious research and clobbering areas like Farndale. My right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton illustrated the wastage of water, and when one looks at this whole issue in modern terms one appreciates the way in which we are progressing backwards.
The Minister's job is to call a halt to this procedure. He should not be giving another turn of the screw. He should stop any bullying of rural areas such as this and accept that we must reconcile our water needs with our resources and that we cannot conduct research into this enormous sphere for £100,000 a year. If the Bill is defeated, as I hope it will be, it may convince water authorities that

we will not accept this sort of approach any longer and that the House affirms that, in future, our water resources will be considered in the right sort of way.

8.43 p.m.

Mr. John Hynd: I must at the outset make a minor protest about the length of time taken by the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) in speaking against the Bill. He must have known that a large number of hon. Members wished to contribute to this important debate and that only a short time was available for them in which to do so.
Not only do I speak of the length of time he took but of the arguments he used. For example, he concluded by saying that he opposed the Measure for several reasons, including the fact that he was against drowning his constituents. That was surely an exaggeration! If there were any question of drowning any hon. Member's constituents I would vote against the Bill. Nobody will be drowned and it is an exaggeration to talk in those terms on such an important occasion as this.
The right hon. Gentleman also spoke of several thousand signatures which had appeared on petitions. He mentioned that signatures had come from places like London. I wonder how many people who signed in London and in areas outside those which are directly concerned with this scheme knew about the Bill, its purpose, and also of the needs of the area? Or did they sign merely because they were asked to do so by certain national bodies which are concerned with interests which have nothing to do with water supplies?
Because of the shortness of time and the number of hon. Members who wish to take part in this debate, I will be brief. I will, therefore, concentrate on the reasons why the Bill is of immense importance in the general context of national water needs. Time and again hon. Members have drawn attention to the important issue of the provision of adequate water supplies for our growing population and for our growing standard of living. Tremendous quantities of water are and will continue to be required to maintain this standard, for industrial development and so on.
The House is very well aware of this argument and it is not therefore necessary


to go over it again. The right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton drew attention to table F in the board's report and said that the shortage of water in this area would be only 40 million gallons a day in 1981. If the right hon. Member looks again at the table he will find that in 2,001, which sounds a long way off but is only 31 years off, it is estimated that that will already have grown to 185 million gallons a day, and this indicates the measure of the problem which we are having to face.
I agree entirely with what my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Darling) said about the unsatisfactory way in which great issues of this kind, affecting not only the immediate or the future needs of large populations in a particular part of the country but the whole country itself, are dealt with at this time of night with this rather desultory attendance in the House. I agree with what he said about how much better it would be if we could give more detailed attention to the arguments for and against the report of the Water Resources Board and the other bodies concerned for a much longer period and in much more detail. This is precisely what we who support the Bill are asking the House to do.
We are asking the House to agree with those hon. Members like my right hon. Friend and those hon. Members who have doubts about this Bill and Bills of this kind that it is not enough to dispose of them one way or another in a three hour debate at this time of night. Such Bills require more careful examination in the interests of all concerned, from the Ramblers' Association to the Council for the Preservation of Rural England through to the people concerned—that is the consumers of water in the area. All we are asking is that we should give the Bill a Second Reading tonight and give it an opportunity of being thoroughly examined in Committee. I was rather surprised to hear a few titters when it was said that the Bill could usefully be dealt with in Committee. I do not see why, because this is what many of those hon. Members who oppose this rushing through of Bills are suggesting—that they should be receive detailed attention.
The right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton referred to the arguments which have been put forward by my hon. Friend

the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Eddie Griffiths) that in 1933 Kingston upon Hull Corporation acquired the powers to build such a reservoir and that it is still empowered to build that reservoir and will be for many years to come even if this Bill is defeated. The right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton said that we had surely progressed since 1933, and this is precisely what we have done. This is precisely what is made clear in the report of the Water Resources Board, where it points out that the developments in modern technology and means of dealing with these matters have reached the point where we can utilise what was accepted as a desirable scheme in 1933, and for which the powers now exist with very little change in the disturbance of amenities, to supply many more times the amount of water, and not only for Kingston upon Hull, but areas as far apart as Sheffield, Barnsley, Scarborough and Rotherham. This would involve about 84 million gallons a day, as against 18 million gallons a day with very little, if any, additional disturbance of the local area or of the countryside.
This is really the point. We could force Kingston upon Hull to go ahead with this on its own. I do not actually think that it would do it, because it would be a complete denial and frustration of the 1963 Act which was passed by the previous Government and which gave the Water Resources Board the responsibility and duty to deal with the resources not on a purely local area basis. It would not go back to the bad old past, where a central city could supply adequate water and dispose of it where it wished, but to have a planned development of our total water supplies. This, so far as the North of England is concerned, is what has been done according to this remarkable report.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to certain alternatives, and made great play with them. I have heard this argument used many times. When the Calderdale Bill was turned down, it was argued by the supporters of the project that there was no alternative, but suddenly they found an alternative in the Farndale scheme. I should have thought that that emphasised the urgency of the need of the Calderdale area to turn to some other alternative, because there is always


an alternative if one looks for it. The question is whether the alternatives are practicable, economic, and generally desirable.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the exploitation of underground water, and purported to quote from the 1969 report of the river board. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman was only paraphrasing because I have here the report of the river authority, and this is what it says about ground water resources:
There would appear to be useful surpluses in the Pennines sub-catchments … but one would hesitate to suggest systematic exploitation of these surpluses. They are of great value in maintaining base flow which provides dilution of industrial effluents and the character of the aquifers is such that many boreholes would be required …
The report goes on to deal with the Don Valley below Doncaster and says that there would appear to be a still more useful surplus in sub-catchment No. 9, and especially in the Triassic sandstone, and that this will warrant further investigation. It then says:
The Triassic sandstones of sub-catchments Nos. 23 and 24"—
which is basically the area with which we are dealing—
show considerable"—
not adequate, or even substantial,—
ground water surpluses which merit further attention being given to them.
It is true that the river board came to that conclusion then, and so has the Water Resources Board. There is no difference between them. The Water Resources Board is making these further investigations which were suggested at that early stage when the full facts were not known. As regards the main area, the Triassic sandstones areas 23 and 24, I understand that if, as it is hoped, it is possible fully to exploit such resources, they will be used to supplement the rivers Swale and Ure and supply water to Leeds and Bradford, and therefore have no contribution to make to this scheme.
The right hon. Gentleman referred also to what I gather was his experience in the Western Desert, or somewhere in Africa, where he says—

Mr. Turton: The hon. Gentleman has avoided reading the recommendation with regard to the Bill. Will he read

recommendation 10 on page 41 of the report, which refers to this area, and not to the Don Valley or some other area?

Mr. Hynd: I was referring to the right hon. Gentleman's assertion that adequate supplies were available, and I read what was said about that. However, I shall do as the right hon. Gentleman asks and read the recommendation on page 41. It says:
Underground water in the Vale of Pickering. It is recommended that investigations be made into the hydrogeology of the Jurassic strata in the Vale of Pickering with a view to the possibility of regulating the Derwent with water abstracted from these strata by means of boreholes.
I do not know why the right hon. Gentleman has taken the trouble to draw attention to that, because that is what the Water Resources Board is doing.
These matters require considerable investigation. I do not pretent to be an engineer, or to say that the investigations are adequate, but the board has a duty and a responsibility placed on it by the House to apply all the technical knowledge that is available to get the proper answers to these questions, and the question that is posed requires further investigation.

Mr. Peter M. Jackson: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I accept his argument, but will he not follow a little further the point he is making? Surely, before we make a decision we should have explored the alternatives very fully. This is what the Water Resources Board are doing, and one applauds them for financing this very expensive scheme. Why not wait until we have the results of the inquiry before taking a decision which is quite irrevocable?

Mr. Hynd: I do not want to read out the report of the Water Resources Board, but the hon. Gentleman will find the reasons adequately stated. On the urgency of the scheme, there is a summary of projects on page 39 which does not mention Calderdale. The report says there are four groups of projects to be completed as soon as possible to meet urgent needs, and so on; and in the list of projects to be completed as soon as possible Farndale reservoir and Derwent are described as a matter of the first urgency.
Hon. Members have pointed out that this is not going to be done tomorrow,


next week or next year. This is an operation which will take a considerable time and there will be ample time for investigating long-term alternatives which can be used to supplement these proposals. I was fascinated by the reference to the experience of the right hon. Gentleman in the African desert, where I gather he was told that there was no water available to which he said that if they dug holes deep enough they would find water. The answer, I imagine, was that if that was so Colonel Nasser would not have the Aswan Dam.
It seems curious, because the boring of water holes in the desert is not new. It has been done by the Italians for a number of years. But these things are done at great inconvenience and expense, where there is no alternative. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the possibility of desalination. In Kuwait they have plenty of fresh water for a small population. Because of the oil resources hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on desalination plans which it would be silly for us to build round the highways and bye ways of this country. In my view, these are not at all practicable alternatives.
The main argument generally used against this and which was used by the right hon. Gentleman who preceded me is that of amenity. This can be an extremely strong argument. It has been used time and again on all kinds of water development schemes. In this case, however, it does not seem to be so relevant as in many others. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. E. Griffiths) quoted the Countryside Commission's comments on this. He referred to the Ryedale branch of the C.P.R.E. whose board agreed that it was a desirable project and would not spoil the amenities but could enhance them; at which the right hon. Gentleman laughed very loudly. But the fact is that the North Yorkshire National Park, to which he referred, was planned in anticipation and consideration of just this kind of reservoir development under the 1933 Act. This was part of what was authorised in establishing the national park.
Furthermore, I can quote from an example in my own area. Many years ago Sheffield developed the Ladybower Reservoir which involved the submersion of a village and created a large lake.

There were protests against this before it was done. It was argued that it would spoil the amenities, but it has so enhanced the amenities that for years the Sheffield City Council has been running bus excursions to the lake as one of the great attractions of the Sheffield area. Possibly the same could be said of a number of similar areas. But the evidence given here by the Countryside Commission and a whole range of other organisations—and I cannot judge for myself, I go by the evidence—is that instead of spoiling amenities this would provide the only lake for many miles in the area and possibly probably add very considerably to the amenities and attractions.
The Ramblers' Association in its protest referred to the large number of people and cars who might be attracted and used this as an argument against the development. I can hardly imagine that a large number of people in cars would be attracted to a site of this kind if the amenities were destroyed. Normally, tourists and others are attracted to this kind of area because its amenities have been enhanced. The Association should consider just what it is arguing—whether too many people will benefit or too few.
In the 1963 Act, we gave the Water Resources Board the responsibility of safeguarding and developing the water resources of the country—one of the most urgent problems we have to face in the next 20, 30 or 40 years. It is doing that job very efficiently. It has produced ample evidence of the desirability of this scheme, which is much more important than many of the other schemes which have come before the House. It would be a tragedy if we were to frustrate the purpose for which we passed the Act and all the work, energy and responsibility of the Board by refusing to give Parliament an opportunity to discuss the Bill in detail. I hope that there will be a considerable majority in favour of the Bill.

9.2 p.m.

Mr. Graham Page: It would be wrong for me to take up much time in intervening. I am sure that the House would like the guidance of the Minister on some of the points raised.
In considering the Bill, it is very important to distinguish the two schemes—first, the reservoir at Farndale and, second, the sluices at Barnby. With regard to the


reservoir, once again the House is faced with a Bill which seeks to put an area of great natural beauty, in a national park, under water. As before when we have discussed Bills of this kind, we are amateurs on the subject. I do not mean that in any derogatory sense because a decision by amateurs can be much sounder than that of experts if, and only if, that decision is founded on information provided by the experts.
I reiterate what my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) said, that we need a far greater expenditure on money and resources on research so that we in this House may be better able to come to a decision on a subject of this sort. Despite the mass of figures with which we have been bombarded, we are still without sufficient information because of the insufficiency of research in this subject.
The alternatives to the reservoir have been put very forcibly by my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton), and I am sure that the House was impressed by the alternative he gave—the extraction of water by means of sluices, coupled with the use of the natural underground lake. The figures he gave were impressive, and obviously everyone would have hoped that that sort of combination of the two parts of the scheme could have come about without the use of Farndale as a reservoir.

Mr. Eddie Griffiths: Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that the facts given by the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) should carry greater weight in the overall assessment of the problem than those of the Water Resources Board?

Mr. Page: I do not think, with all respect to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Eddie Griffiths), that there is anything contradictory here. The figures given by my right hon. Friend are given by experts. The Water Resources Board has given its opinion on those figures. It is for this House to decide, as far as it can, between the experts on this subject. All I was saying was that obviously everyone would prefer that an area of natural beauty should not be put under water if there is another way of getting that water.
The proposition put forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton must have impressed the House very considerably.
This brings me to the second part of the scheme—the sluices. That appeals to me as a trend in the right direction in the development of the water resources of the country. It is a pointer, I hope, to future national policy on development of our water resources. I would like to see much more development of the barrage, the estuarial scheme and that method of providing water. But as the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Darling) said, one opinion is that one must have a regular reservoir in such a place. If there were the alternative of not a surface reservoir but an underground lake we should all be happy to use it, but we need more research on this.
I hope the Minister will be able to say that the Government will encourage the allocation of resources to research, because again and again it has come forward in these debates that we are guessing at the right course. No firm policy has been put before us yet, although the recent report of the Water Resources Board has given us some indication of a possible national policy which I hope the Minister will be able to say the Government will develop.
While we go on debating these Bills piecemeal it is very difficult for the House to decide one way or the other. The Calderdale Water Bill comes forward and we defeat it; the Derwent Water Bill comes forward and we may pass it. This is not the right way to legislate on the water resources of this country. It is becoming more and more important, and I urge the Minister to assure the House, first, that we shall have some indication of a national policy on this and, second, that extensive resources will be devoted to this in future.

9.7 p.m.

The Minister of State, Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Denis Howell): It is perhaps convenient to intervene at this stage to give the House some guidance about the involved, difficult and even passionate considerations which hon. Gentlemen are bound to bring to these questions.
All of us would want to pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman the Member


for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) for the way in which he stated his case, even though some of us, including myself, are not able to accept his conclusions.
The hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) and the right hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) have spoken on research. This is a very fair point indeed. If the right hon. Member for Ashford does not mind my saying so, even the figures he gave show that, starting from scratch a few years ago, the water authorities are building up their research programme very considerably. If one has any experience involving the mounting of research one knows that it is a very difficult thing to get going.
In addition to the figures, the House will be interested to know, in order to set the record straight, that on desalination alone we spent £3 million in research in the last four years, and the Water Resources Board has spent £500,000 in researching into the question of the Morecambe barrage. Perhaps I am a little loth politically to pay tribute to hon. Gentlemen opposite but I think I can do it since I was involved throughout the Committee stage and I took a great interest in the Water Resources Act 1963, which went through with the agreement of both sides of the House.
If ever there was a justification for the initiative which the previous Administration took in practice, it is working out now in the policies of the Water Resources Board, which is doing exactly the opposite of what the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton accused it of doing. working from hand-to-mouth. It is exactly the opposite of hand-to-mouth policies with which we are presented. When it finishes its impressive researches. Ministers of the future will have far more knowledge on which to take decisions, and all the things which the House wants will be possible as a result of this activity.
I accept that the need for this scheme has to be shown overwhelmingly to allow this Bill to go forward. Having spent even more time looking into this matter since my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) made his tremendous oration only a week of two ago, and having looked at this matter in more detail than any proposal before, I am convinced of the overwhelming case for this Bill to have a Second Reading.

On the question of need there could hardly be any doubt. The deficiencies in the area of Yorkshire and the River Ouse will be 45 million gallons a day by 1981 and 187 million gallons a day by 2001.
Sheffield and Hull Corporations represent very important conurbations in the industrial life of this country. To run any risk of grave water shortages in those areas would be a very serious matter. Although part of the responsibility is on the promoters and hon. Members on this side of the House to show need, it is also fair to say that part of the responsibility on the other side of the House is to show that there will be no serious risk if this Bill is rejected tonight. I do not think that proposition can be sustained.

Mr. Turton: I quoted from Table F of the report we had last week. There the figures were 40 million and 65 million gallons. Those are different from the figures quoted by the hon. Gentleman. Are his figures correct?

Mr. Howell: The figures I have quoted on the best advice I have are the correct figures. I shall come back to some of the quotations made by the right hon. Gentleman. I think he was a little selective in his quotations, and less than fair in some of the things he said.
I am dealing with growth in the need for water. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Eddie Griffiths) rightly said that every time a corporation goes in for slum clearance, consumption of water goes up. Industry itself requires more and more water. It is extremely significant that the Confederation of British Industry has expressed the view very strongly that the Bill is necessary in the interests of industry in the Sheffield conurbation.
We estimate that the growth rate of need for water in Sheffield and the partner towns of Barnsley and Rotherham is about 2·3 per cent. and in Hull, bearing in mind the projected Humberside development, about 3 per cent. a year. These are not extravagant estimates. In 1969 both these undertakings had surpluses of less than 10 per cent. of their reliable yields. Sheffield had a surplus of 5 million gallons out of 55 million gallons a day and Hull less than 2½, million gallons out of 27 million gallons a day. Those surpluses in these


circumstances are very marginal and make the case. On those figures alone, Sheffield, Barnsley and Rotherham will be going into deficit by 1973, and Hull by 1972. That is a very serious situation, and we should be very loth to interfere with anything that will put water supplies in those areas in serious jeopardy.
There are additional demands coming. There are the new potash developments in North Yorkshire, which require the regulation of the Esk.

Mr. Michael Shaw: May we assume that that is an assertion that they will happen, or may happen?

Mr. Howell: It is an assertion that if we add that need to the needs of the towns I have mentioned, the total requirement by 1981 will be for a further 28 million gallons of water a day.
A tremendous degree of attention has been paid to the Bill, and rightly so. One does not complain about it. If there were the overwhelming objection from the numbers of people suggested I believe that we should have more than the one petition from the Ryedale Joint Water Board, which has a right to draw the attention of the House to its contentions and to have them examined.

Mr. Graham Page: I understand that about 15 authorities have reserved their right to petition in the other House, which is normal procedure.

Mr. Howell: Indeed they have, and their petitions can be dealt with if they come, but if they had the burning sense of indignation which has been suggested they would possibly have petitioned in both Houses. On the one side there is the Ryedale Joint Water Board and on the other the very strong support for the proposals by the Water Resources Board, which I think we all agree is approaching its task in a very responsible manner.
The question of amenity has very fairly been raised by the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton and other right hon. Members. I am advised that the river authority has been very closely in touch with all the amenity bodies. Rarely have proposals been so widely canvassed with all the amenity bodies—the North York Moors National Park

Planning Committee, the Countryside Commission, the Nature Conservancy, the Ramblers Association, the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, the East Yorkshire Conservation Committee, and—most important of all—the North Advisory Council for Sport and Recreation. The river authority has made it clear to all those bodies that their points on amenity and recreational use will be taken very fully into account.
I listened to the great eloquence of the right hon. Gentleman on the subject of daffodils. I am advised that most of the area of daffodils will be protected by bye-laws and will be either below or around the dam site. If that happens the area will be Wordsworth personified. We shall have the daffodils
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
This is surely the classic, traditional place for us to view our daffodils and get the maximum enjoyment from them.
I am told that 15 alternative sites have been examined exhaustively. Therefore one must conclude that the promoters of the Bill have taken every reasonable precaution to find the best possible site and have all the alternatives examined. I am told that of the 15 there is only one viable alternative to Farndale. That is the lower Rosedale site on the River Severn, which I am told would be vigorously opposed by the Countryside Commission. No doubt this is the reason for the rejection of that site.
The right hon. Gentleman spent a little time on the subject of ground water, and he has consistently pursued this in the House. He talked about the availability of well over 700 million gallons a day and quoted from a technical report of the Yorkshire Ouse and Hull River Authority. He did not quote from the survey accompanying the technical report. If he looks at pages 30 and 31 of that report he will see it is said that these are theoretical amounts. There is no firm indication that they are there. The report says:
Useful developments cannot be made when none of the conditions are fulfilled, and indeed to attempt the theoretical field development could well he prohibitively expensive.
If we add prohibitive expense to the theory of the matter the report takes on an entirely different light.
I am told that it is likely that these underground resources sustain the flows


in rivers such as the Derwent and Hull. A recent study and pilot schemes in the Thames and Great Ouse areas support this. The river authority has recently carried out a survey of the local resources and demands under Section 14 of the Water Resources Act 1963 and initiated a survey of the ground water resources. It is interesting to see what the possibilities are but estimates that it will take our years to produce results. It is clear that we cannot possibly afford to allow lull and Sheffield to wait so long.
I am advised that the main point about ground water is that it is notoriously an uncertain quantity until it has been exhaustively tested. This is bound to take a long time.
The other possible alternative mentioned has been desalination. Desalination for Sheffield would, clearly, be out of the question. It might be possible for Hull. An estimate has been made of the cost of supplying Hull with 12 million gallons a day by desalination. Production costs, if this proved possible, would be 10s. 6d. per 1,000 gallons compared with—

Mr. Peter M. Jackson: No.

Mr. Howell: That is the advice I have.

Mr. Jackson: I would draw my hon. Friend's attention to the Question I tabled recently to the Ministry of Technology asking for the cost of various desalination techniques. If he looks at this he will see that the figure per 1,000 gallons is much less than 10s. 6d.

Mr. Howell: I ask about this today to get up-to-date figures, and this is the production cost of obtaining water from the sea for Hull. I will look into my hon. Friend's point, but I am told that it is 10s. 6d. a 1,000 gallons compared with the cost under this scheme of 4s. 3d. a 1,000 gallons. The economy is, clearly, a significant factor.
A Humber barrage was mentioned, but I am told that it would be inappropriate because of the poor quality of the water available. The conclusion we reached is that, if one is looking for an economic, effective scheme, there is no reasonable alternative to the one that is before the House.
In view of the serious risks which would be inherent in failing to give the Bill a Second Reading, I could not possibly advise the House to put in jeopardy

large numbers of people in industrial areas who help to sustain the nation. The proper place for the examination of arguments of detail is in Committee, when all parties can make their case or make inroads into their opponent's case. That is the proper procedure to adopt, and I should be very loth to see the Bill not given the Second Reading which it clearly deserves.

9.25 p.m.

Mr. John H. Osborn: The Minister has spoken firmly in favour of the Bill and persuaded many doubting hon. Members on this side of the House that the Bill should be given a Second Reading. May I be the first Conservative to give unqualified support to the Bill.
The Minister referred to the 1963 Water Resources Act. He and I both served on the Committee during the passage of that Bill, and there was a degree of agreement on both sides of the Committee. I have been dissatisfied with the progress made by the Water Resources Board and its advisers and I have expressed a certain amount of disappointment, if not dissatisfaction. I had hoped that the proposals for the barrages at Morecambe Bay and Solway would have made better progress.
The Minister touched on desalination, and I share his view that, in terms of cost, it appears to be a long way off, but I hope there will be some imaginative proposals to include desalination programmes.
I find it difficult, in looking at this as an abstract problem, to be honest from a scientific and technological point of view and not appear to be prejudiced in backing a Bill which favours Sheffield. As evidence has come forward in the last few weeks, I have decided to give the Bill my unqualified support. May I give a few reasons for this in the hope of persuading my hon. Friends to support the scheme. I live in the Peak district and I am conscious that, unless we use more imagination, many beauty spots in that area could also be damaged. I suggest that these proposals are exceptional and part of a long-term scheme which was devised at least 20 years ago. May I give the background to Sheffield's water supplies.
As the Minister said, the requirement of Sheffield is for 56 million gallons a


day; 72 million gallons in total, allowing for compensation. In the 19th century and over the years, Sheffield obtained its water from impounding reservoirs in the hills to the west. In 1899 Sheffield entered into partnership with Derby, Leicester and Nottingham, resulting in an arrangement whereby Sheffield had 25 per cent. of the water coming from the Derbyshire Derwent which flowed into the Trent. In 1910 a tunnel, 4¼ miles long, took water from the Howden and Derwent reservoirs into reservoirs in the Sheffield area. Today, of the 72 million gallons used, 10 million gallons are from Derbyshire. Soon after the opening of the compensating reservoir at Ladybower, Sheffield water engineers and advisers realised that Sheffield could no longer turn to the centre of England for its water.
It was obvious that impounding reservoirs in the hills in the Pennines would be required by the Midlands, particularly Derby, Nottingham and Leicester. Were there any rivers with a regular flow of water from which water could be taken near the source? Where would be a good place to look? The water engineers looked for a suitable supply of water and found the Yorkshire Derwent and developed the Elvington scheme. The scheme was approved in 1961 and in 1965 Sheffield opened the first phase of the scheme taking 15 million gallons a day. In 1968 the second stage was completed with 25 million gallons a day being taken from the sluice.
The intention of Sheffield in the Bill is to take another 15 million gallons a day, making a total of 40 million. Only half of the supply coming from this intake on the Yorkshire Derwent goes into Sheffield itself. When the scheme is implemented in phase 3, still only half of the water will be used by Hull and Sheffield and the other areas. The remainder will be used by the rest of the Yorkshire and Ouse area. Although the scheme is of value to Sheffield, half the water arising from it will be available to areas other than the major cities. I will touch on these arguments when we deal with the charging aspects, but I emphasise that the scheme is not entirely for the benefit of Hull and Sheffield.
A most important report has been issued by the Water Resources Board on

water resources in the North, the most fascinating aspect of which is that the North is looked at as a whole. There are proposals for at least five schemes to transfer water from one river valley to another. This means a co-ordinated scheme among different river valleys. There is a proposal ultimately in the year 2001 that Yorkshire will receive 84 million gallons a day from Lancashire and 99 million gallons a day from the Tyne, presumably from the Otterstone reservoir if it is decided to develop it. Therefore the Farndale project features very much in the report.
Ten different proposals have been put up, four of which relate to esturial schemes, but in each of the schemes the Farndale Reservoir is a priority matter. As the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. John Hynd) said, whatever happens to all the alternatives the priority proposal is that relating to Farndale. Therefore, in terms of unified develop-men in the North the Farndale proposal has overwhelming arguments in its favour.
I will not dwell too long on the proposal by my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) involving the use of boreholes. We know from what the Minister has said that there is a deficiency of some 185 million gallons a day in Yorkshire. The additional facilities as a result of this scheme will be 88 million gallons a day. It is suggested that the Ouse would have an additional intake.

Mr. Turton: My hon. Friend gave a figure that has never been given before. The Water Resources Board's figure was 47 million gallons a day. Where does my hon. Friend get his 88 million gallons a day from?

Mr. Osborn: The figure was 165 million gallons in the year 2001.

Mr. Turton: But my hon. Friend mentioned the figure of 88 million gallons. I am saying that the Water Resources Board gave a figure of 47 million gallons a day.

Mr. Osborn: The tables at which I am looking show that an additional 88 million gallons a day will become available. I will show my hon. Friend the figures afterwards.
One method of dealing with deficiencies has been the use of boreholes. The


other method was to use the Ouse to a greater extent. That would take time since that would require more regulating reservoirs on the Ouse. Of course, bore-holes should ultimately be used. However, I have said that technology is changing. It would take four or five years from the survey to discover what will be the consequences of increasing the use of boreholes in the area, but this scheme should start immediately and, therefore, we cannot wait until more knowledge is available.
Sheffield and Yorkshire have a need. This scheme is a realistic one and fits in with the pattern involving the whole of the North. Because of the imaginative nature of the original concept to take water from the mouth of the Derwent before it reaches the tidal area and the extension of Barmby sluice to Hull, I think that the scheme should be supported.

9.35 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: This may be a suitable moment for a word of doubt about the Bill o be uttered.
The trouble with water is that one never knows whom to believe. When the Calderdale Water Bill was before the House on 29th January, hon. Members were told that there was no alternative to the Overwood scheme. We were told that all other alternatives had been carefully examined and that, for overwhelming reasons, they had been rejected.
After this House, in its wisdom, rejected that Bill, words of grave apprehension about the future were written in the local Press. However, within five days the Calderdale Water Board had been to see the Minister with the promoters of the present Bill and had arranged to make up its estimated deficiency from the Farndale scheme. In other words, the outcome of the rejection of the Over-wood scheme was that the Calderdale Water Board found an alternative which had not been mentioned from beginning to end of the inquiry into the Calderdale Water Bill.

Mr. John Hynd: My right hon. Friend pointed out that the Calderdale people said that there were overwhelming reasons against the rejection of their scheme, yet they found an alternative when the scheme was rejected. However,

their fears may be justified, judging by the opposition that there is to the present scheme.

Mr. Houghton: I am coming to the point referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Eddie Griffiths) when he said that the opponents of the Calderdale Water Bill should be relieved that that water board had found alternative sources to supply its needs. I want to tell my hon. Friend straight away that I cannot change sides merely because my constituency, unexpectedly, has a direct interest in the Farndale scheme.
I doubted, and still doubt, whether the estimates of need were valid when they were made by the Calderdale Water Board, and I must warn my hon. Friend the Minister of State that when using the word "deficiency" he must bear in mind all the time that a deficiency is estimated on the safe reliable yield in drought conditions as opposed to the level of current consumption.
In the debate on 29th January, I questioned this basis of estimating deficiency. I have since discovered in a Report of the Central Advisory Water Committee published in 1959:
To make provision for full supply in contions of extreme drought would require expenditure out of all proportion to the benefits obtained, and we have considered it right to proceed on a basis of average demand and ordinary dry year (i.e. not extreme drought) supply.
At that time, that appeared to be the basis for estimating deficiency.
Since 1959 water boards have proceeded on the assumption that the safe reliable yield is the low level of resources in conditions of drought, which have occurred only three times in the last hundred years.
Although my constituency has a direct interest in the Bill, I find it impossible to give my support to it, because I am not prepared to set aside my attempt at objective appraisal of the Bill solely on constituency grounds.
Those of us who do not know the area well and have to rely on the information that the House is given to reach a conclusion are in the same boat. During the debate on the Calderdale Water Bill there was considerable impatience in the House at the piecemeal way in which we were being asked to deal with this water problem. The trouble with these Bills is


that the House has not got available at the time of debate an independent technical appraisal of the scheme. We have the advantage of the judgment of the Water Resources Board and of the Minister, who, incidentally, is far more confident on this Bill than he was on the Calderdale Water Bill, which suggests that that Bill was as weak as I said it was.
Another point I must make about sending the Bill to a Committee is that the degree of searching examination of the Bill in Committee will depend upon whether the objectors can afford it, as my rural district council knows to its cost. It cost £8,000 for it to get all the necessary legal and technical aid to deal with the three weeks' hearing before a Select Committee in the House of Lords. When some of my hon. Friends, on 29th January in this House, said, "Surely you will not stop this Bill going to a Committee", I had to whisper to them, "I must, because my objectors cannot afford to go on." Indeed, the Hepton Rural District Council has had to go to the Minister for borrowing powers to meets it legal and technical bills. I do not know whether the objectors to this Bill will be able to afford the amount which will be required to put up an effective show in Committee.
Recently, the Minister has said that he is proposing to ask the House to approve an Amendment to the Water Resources Act, 1963, to make it possible to go from the Private Bill procedure on these water schemes to a public inquiry and Ministerial decision. There are arguments for and against that procedure. I should prefer strengthening the Parliamentary process on Bills of this kind rather than handing over more decisions to Ministers who will go through the same agony as we go through and may feel that it would be better for Parliament to take the responsibility which really belongs to them.
I am not setting up in business as a "reservoir buster". When the debate began I was far less certain of my position on this Bill than on the Calderdale Water Bill. Indeed, I was impressed by the speech of the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton), and my hon. Friend the Minister of State has put up an equally impressive and convincing

performance. So we are faced with the dilemma: shall be take the responsibility for rejecting this Bill?
When it comes to the environment, some of us must make a stand, even to the point of being unreasonable and stubborn, in order constantly to sound the warning note about the erosion of what remains of our countryside through pollution and the other evils which are bound to creep across the landscape with a growing population with higher expectations in its standard of living.
I will finish with a quotation from the Observer newspaper on Sunday about a conference on the environment in Edinburgh:
What roused the students was any sign of total commitment to tile environment, regardless of cost, and if you could throw in a remark that the System can never stomach this, so much the better. They raised the roof for Nottingham University economist Mrs. Sylvia Trench when she observed that society can only buy and sell commodities and that, because beauty is not a commodity, there is little hope for it until one can either cost beauty or overthrow commodity capitalism.
That is the message which stubborn and unreasonable people give to this House. I claim to be one of them, and I must. in the circumstances, oppose the Bill.

9.46 p.m.

Mr. James Johnson: In the time that we have left, no one can make other than a clear and simple speech, since I believe that the supporters of the Bill have made their case, despite the moving peroration of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton). Like him, I am a preservationist and I put any campaign of civilised and sensitive people like himself and the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) against anyone who wishes to erode the countryside. But this is not happening here. Let me take the two main points in the argument of those who oppose the Bill: first, that we are eroding the countryside, and, second, that we can get the water elsewhere.
I deny both propositions. I have studied geography and geology, and I was fascinated by the flights of fancy about this million-year-old lake in the Vale of Pickering. Like the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton, I know that there was a lake there. I know about pebbles and gravels at Filey, and I know that they get out via Castle Howard, but


I would question his conclusion that one has merely to sink a borehole in the Vale of Pickering to get plenty of water. I think that he said 7,000 million gallons.
The right hon. Gentleman quoted engineers on his side, but we are told, in contradistinction, that the borehole which he mentioned when he spoke of taking water from underground strata is being fed by a tributary of the Derwent. Therefore, when he speaks of going down to get water, he is merly robbing Peter to pay Paul. It emerges later; he would merely be lowering what is already a very low water table. So I deny what he said about getting his water there.
We also have heard about daffodils. I never knew that the Minister was a Wordsworth fan. If he was picking up flights of this nature, I would have thought that he might have taken up, knowing him so well, something entitled "Intimations of Immortality", which is fairly well known as well.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Eddie Griffiths) made a fine speech in which he gave a quotation from a speech of Sir Martyn Beckett, about the Thirsk and Malton and Ryedale and Wolds area of the C.P.R.E., in which he said that it would enhance the amenities of this part of Yorkshire to have water in this valley and this national park.
We have here many leaflets sent to us by all manner of associations sporting and others, which talk of canoeing, boating, fishing, and many other activities upon this lake. I would say it is a complete myth to attempt to tell this House that we shall lose all these wonderful daffodils. I am told that the famous Daffodil Walk will be, as the Minister said, above the water level and will enhance the amenities.
The second argument was "Get the water elsewhere". There is a vital need for water in South Yorkshire. Indeed, not only North Humberside but South Humberside will need water. We were told earlier that 60 per cent. of the houses in one constituency lack baths. When I am told that there is a waste of water today, I think that there will be a lot more water used in the future when we give our people the decent amenities they need and access to a fuller life.
The whole debate, with all its exchange of millions of gallons per day, and so on, hinges about the advice given to either side in this argument. Can we depend upon our advisers? We have had statistics slung at us all evening. I would say that we are the amateurs here and we depend upon the engineers for this skilled advice. I believe the advisers to the Water Resources Board are not only skilled but dependable.
When I am asked to make my decision, I study the board's two reports. The interim report gave us a possible total deficiency in the area of nearly 60 million gallons per day by 1981, and the cardinal advice given us is that we must immediately begin work on this regulating reservoir at Farndale in order that additional water supplies shall be available to meet the deficiencies in the early 1970s. This has been backed up within the last few weeks by the additional report "Water Resources in the North". That is what I depend upon.
We have this wonderful suggestion of desalination to give us the water we need. I was in Kuwait in the early 1950s. It costs less than it did then, but I cannot imagine many wealthy oil sheikhs in East Yorkshire who would finance such a costly scheme of getting water from the sea. Indeed, I believe that the many seaside towns, like Horn-sea and Withernsea, that depend upon tourists coming, would kick against these unsightly buildings on the coast.
Again, some of my hon. Friends tell me that I can wait. I can wait for what? Morecambe Bay? Indeed, someone suggested we wait for the Wash, the Humber Barrage. We have not got time to wait for these schemes. Indeed, the Humber Barrage, if that were laid across the mouth of the Humber, would still mean delay. We have been speaking about pollution and eroding the countryside. We would have a lake there. One would not be able to dive into it, never mind use it; it would stink to high heaven with pollution, detergents and the rest being pushed into it. We in Hull and Sheffield do not have time to wait.
We were told by the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton about his constituents and their difficulties. The land is owned by Hull. This valley is in a very low grade category and the authority's officers have met all the


people occupying the land. They have held two public meetings to explain the proposals; the dam, the site, the planting of woodlands and so on.
I understand that a number of the present tenants now wish to retire and that several of them already work outside the valley either whole-time or part-time. Only two, three or four families now wholly employed in agriculture in the valley would be faced with the necessity to find employment elsewhere. In addition to the compensation that would be paid, additional compensation would be paid in cases of hardship. I do not believe that many constituents would kick at that.
In addition to the petition which we have seen, it is alleged that Hull and Sheffield will be the main beneficiaries. When the dam is built these areas will be the first in the queue to benefit, but many others will be immediately behind us in the queue, such as Barnsley, Wakefield and the famous Calder Valley. The potential benefits are many and there is no real alternative to this scheme.
Some hon. Members opposite may argue against this scheme from the financial point of view, although I cannot see how that case could be made when one sets off the proposed scheme against the cost of desalination and the various other methods of getting the water we need. I understand that anybody, whether or not he is a member of the N.F.U., will pay one-third of a penny more per 1,000 gallons of water. Considering that, for example, farmers are now paying 3s, for this gallonage, I cannot believe that an additional one-third of a penny will prove a burden, especially since farmers are at present—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman is raising a matter

which would be more appropriate to the second debate which will take place on this issue. We have agreed to keep the two debates separate.

Mr. Johnson: I thought that I was getting near the bone, as it were, Mr. Speaker, and I return immediately to the context of the Bill.
A a Yorkshire hon. Member, I suggest that we must not be pusillanimous about this. We would have to hang our heads in shame if we did not make the utmost attempt to ensure that our constituents are guaranteed—not only our constituents in Hull and Sheffield but the population generally—a supply of good water.
On the other hand, we must safeguard this water. I hope that we have convinced those who, like myself, value the countryside, of the rightness of this scheme. Perhaps we have even convinced some of those Welsh Nationalists who are a little jealous of their water leaving Wales for Merseyside and other parts of England. Perhaps we have also convinced some of the preservationists that there will be no danger to the amenities of this lovely valley.
I see sitting below the Gangway one of my hon. Friends who lives near Hull. I am sure that, when this scheme is completed, he and I will view the daffodils by the water and will continue to regard this as a beautiful place for all to visit.

Mr. John Hynd: Mr. John Hynd rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put:—

The House divided: Ayes 163. Noes 61.

Division No. 76.]
AYES
 [10.0 p.m.


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Doughty, Charles


Alldritt, Walter
Buchan, Norman
Dunn, James A.


Anderson, Donald
Cant, R. B.
Dunnett, Jack


Armstrong, Ernest
Concannon, J. D.
Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)


Ashton, Joe (Bassetlaw)
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th &amp; C'b'e)


Beaney, Alan
Cronin, John
English, Michael


Bence, Cyril
Dalyell, Tam
Evans, loan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)


Bidwell, Sydney
Darling, Bt. Hn. George
Fernyhough, E.


Binns, John
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Finch, Harold


Bishop, E. S.
Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)


Blackburn, F.
Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)
Foley, Maurice


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey
Ford, Ben


Boston, Terence
Dewar, Donald
Forrester, John


Brooks, Edwin
Dobson, Ray
Fowler, Gerry


Brown, Bob(N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Doig, Peter
Galpern, Sir Myer




Garrett, W. E.
McElhone, frank
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Mackenzie, Alasdair(Ross &amp; Crom'ty)
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy


Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth(St.P'c'as)


Hamling, William
Mackie, John
Rose, Paul


Harper, Joseph
Maclennan, Robert
Ross, Rt. Hn. William


Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
McNamara, J. Kevin
Rowlands, E.


Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith
Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)
Short, Rt. Hn. Edward(N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Haseldine, Norman
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Hattersley, Roy
Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfield, E.)
Silverman, Julius


Hay, John
Mapp, Charles
Slater, Joseph


Hazell, Bert
Marks, Kenneth
Snow, Julian


Heffer, Eric S.
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Spriggs, Leslie


Henig, Stanley
Mendelson, John
Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John


Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret
Millan, Bruce
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley


Hiley, Joseph
Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Temple, John M.


Howell, Denis (Small Heath)
Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)
Thomson, Rt. Hn. George


Hoy, Bt. Hn. James
Molloy, William
Thornton, Ernest


Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Tinn, James


Hunter, Adam
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Urwin, T. W.


Irvine, Rt. Hn. Sir Arthur
Moyle, Roland
Varley Eric G.


Jackson, Colin (B'h'se &amp; Spenb'gh)
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Vickers, Dame Joan


Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
Murray, Albert
Wall patrick


Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Oakes, Gordon
Watkins, David (Consett)


Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Ogden, Eric
Wellbeloved, James


Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West)
O'Halloran, Michael
Wells, William (walsall, N.)


Judd, Frank
Osborn, John (Hallam)
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Kelley, Richard
Oswald, Thomas
Whitlock, William


Lambton, Viscount
Palmer, Arthur
Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)


Lawson, George
Pannell, Ht. Hn. Charles
Williams, Clifford (Abertillery)


Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)
Parker, John (Dagenham)
Willis, Rt. Hn. George


Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Lestor, Miss Joan
Peel, John
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Pentland, Norman
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Lomas, Kenneth
Perry, George H. (Nottingham, S.)
Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Loughlin, Charles
Price, Christopher (Perry Barr)
Woof, Robert


Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry



McBride, Neil
Rees, Merlyn
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


McCann, John
Rhodes, Geoffrey
Mr. John Hynd and


MacColl, James
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Mr. Michael Shaw.


MacDermot, Niall
Richard, Ivor





NOES


Archer, Peter (R'wley Regis &amp; Tipt'n)
Hooley, Frank
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey


Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)
Hooson, Emlyn
Russell, Sir Ronald


Baker, W. H. K. (Banff)
Hornby, Richard
Sharples, Richard


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos. &amp; A Fhm)
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Smith, John (London &amp; W'minster)


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)
Jackson, Peter M. (High Peak)
Stodart, Anthony


Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Jopling, Michael
Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow, Cathcart)


Brewis John
Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &amp; Chatham)
Tilney, John


Buchanan-Smith, Alick(Angus, N &amp; M)
Kershaw, Anthony
Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.


Dalkeith Earl of
Lee, John (Reading)
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Davidson, James(Aberdeenshire, W.)
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Waddington, David


Dean, Paul
Lubbock, Eric
Wainwright, Richard (Colne Valley)


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)
Macdonald, A. H.
Watkins, Tudor (Brecon &amp; Radnor)


Dickens, James
Marten, Neil
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Driberg, Tom
Monro, Hector
Wiggin, A. W.


Emery, Peter
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Winstanley, Dr. M. P.


Evans, Gwynfor (C'marthen)
Page, Derek (King's Lynn)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick



Pardoe, John
Worsley, Marcus


Farr, John
Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)
Younger, Hn. George


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Pavitt, Laurence



Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Grant-Ferris, Sir Robert
Prior, J. M. L.
Mr. Albert Booth and


Hawkins, Paul
Pym, Francis
Mr. Marcus Kimball.

Question put accordingly, That the Bill Bill be now read a Second time:—

The House divided: Ayes 167, Noes 61.

Division No. 77.]
AYES
[10.10 p.m.


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Boston, Terence
Dalyell, Tam


Alldritt, Walter
Brooks, Edwin
Darling, Rt. Hn. George


Anderson, Donald
Brown, Bob(N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Davidson, James(Aberdeenshire, W.)


Armstrong, Ernest
Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)


Ashton, Joe (Bassetlaw)
Buchan, Norman
Davies, Ifor (Gower)


Beaney, Alan
Cant, R. B.
Dobson, Ray


Bence, Cyril
Carlisle, Mark
Doig, Peter


Binns, John
Concannon, J. D.
Doughty, Charles


Bishop, E. S.
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Dunn, James A.


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Cronin, John
Dunnett, Jack




Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)
Lomas, Kenneth
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry


Dun woody, Dr. John (F'th &amp; C'b'e)
Loughlin, Charles
Rees, Merlyn


Emery, Peter
Lubbock, Eric
Rhodes, Geoffrey


English, Michael
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Richard, Ivor


Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)
McBride, Neil
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Fernyhough, E.
McCann, John
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy


Finch, Harold
MacColl, James
Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth(St.P'c'as)


Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
MacDermot, Niall
Ross, Rt. Hn. William


Foley, Maurice
McElhone, Frank
Rowlands, E.


Ford, Ben
Mackenzie, Alasdair(Ross &amp; Crom'ty)
sharples, Richard


Forrester, John
Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Short, Rt. Hn. Edward(N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Fowler, Gerry
Mackie, John
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Galpern, Sir Myer
Maclennan, Robert
Silverman, Julius


Garrett, W. E.
McNamara, J. Kevin
Slater, Joseph


Glover, Sir Douglas
Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)
snow, Julian


Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Spriggs, Leslie


Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfield, E.)
stainton, Keith


Hamling, William
Mapp, Charles
Storehouse, Bt. Hn. John


Harper, Joseph
Marks, Kenneth
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley


Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Temple, John M.


Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith
Mendelson, John
Thomson, Rt. Hn. George


Haseldine, Norman
Miltan, Bruce
Thornton, Ernest


Hattersley, Roy
Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Tinn, James


Hazell, Bert
Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)
Urwin, T. W.


Heffer, Eric S.
Molloy, William
Varley, Eric G.


Henig, Stanley
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Vickers, Dame Joan


Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Wainwright, Richard (Colne Valley)


Hiley, Joseph
Moyle, Roland
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Howell, Denis (Small Heath)
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Wall, Patrick


Hoy, Rt. Hn. James
Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Watkins, David (Consett)


Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Murray, Albert
Wellbeloved, James


Hunter, Adam
Nicholls, Sir Harmar
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Jackson, Colin (B'h'se &amp; Spenb'gh)
Oakes, Gordon
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Ogden, Eric
Whitlock, William


Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
O'Halloran, Michael
Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)


Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Osborn John (Hallam)
Williams, Clifford (Abertillery)


Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Oswald, Thomas
Willis, Rt. Hn. George


Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West)
Palmer, Arthur
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Jopling, Michael

Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Judd, Frank
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles
Winstanley, Dr. M. P.


Kitson, Timothy
Pardoe, John
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Lambton, Viscount
Parker, John (Dagenham)
woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Lawson, George
Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)
Woof, Robert


Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)
Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)



Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Peel, John
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Lestor, Miss Joan
Pentland, Norman
Mr. John Hynd and


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Price, Christopher (Perry Barr)
Mr. Michael Shaw.


Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)






NOES


Archer, Peter (R'wley Regis &amp; Tipt'n)
Grant-Ferris, Sir Robert
Pym, Francis


Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)
Hay, John
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Baker, W. H. K. (Banff)
Hooley, Frank
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos. &amp; Fhm)
Hooson, Emlyn
Royle, Anthony


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)
Hornby, Richard
Russell, Sir Ronald


Braine, Bernard
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Smith, John (London &amp; W'minster)


Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Jackson, Peter M. (High Peak)
Stodart, Anthony


Brewis, John
Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &amp; Chatham)
Tilney, John


Bryan, Paul
Kershaw, Anthony
Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.


Buchanan-Smith, Alick(Angus, N &amp; M)
Kirk, Peter
van straubenzee, W. R.


Dalkeith, Earl of
Lee, John (Reading)
Waddington, David


Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Watkins, Tudor (Brecon &amp; Radnor)


Dean, Paul
Macdonald, A. H.
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)
Marten, Neil
Wiggin, A. W.


de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey
Monro, Hector
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Dickens, James
More, Jasper
Worsley, Marcus


Driberg, Tom
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Younger, Hn. George


Evans, Gwynfor (C'marthen)
Page, Derek (King's Lynn)



Farr, John
Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Pavitt, Laurence
Mr. Albert Booth and


Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)
Mr. Marcus Kimball.


Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Prior, J. M. L.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed.

Orders of the Day — BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That the Proceedings on the Motion for an Instruction relating to the Yorkshire and Derwent Water Bill, and the Proceedings on the Income and Corporation Taxes Bill [Lords], the Taxes Management Bill [Lords] and the Sea Fish Industry Bill [Lords] may be entered upon and proceeded with at this day's Sitting at any hour, though opposed.—[Mr. Harper.]

Orders of the Day — YORKSHIRE DERWENT WATER BILL

10.17 p.m.

Mr. Turton: I beg to move:
That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill to amend Clauses 43 to 46 so as to provide that the cost of the construction of Farndale Reservoir and its ancillary works be financed solely by contributions from those directly benefiting from the resulting supply of water.
—in other words the people who will benefit. We heard previously that Hull and Sheffield could pay for the cost of the scheme and not my constituents or those of other hon. Members who are to get no benefit at all.
I would shortly recite the history of this. In 1961 Sheffield had a water order which allowed it to abstract 15 million gallons a day. The works were paid for entirely by Sheffield.
In 1962 we had a White Paper on Water Conservation, (Cmnd. 1693) which said:
Where conservation works benefit only one or two abstractors, it would be right that those abstractors should meet the whole cost. But in many cases a variety of small works will be carried out to help meet a general growth of demand from absractors … and benefit will not be precisely apportionable. The cost of such works would have to be spread over all abstractors.
After that Sheffield got its second water Order in 1964 and an additional 10 million gallons a day. Again the cost of the works was entirely paid by Sheffield.
The history of this Bill is as follows. On 31st October, 1967, Sheffield and Hull met together to decide who should promote a Water Bill. As there was an argument and Sheffield and Hull at that time could not decide who would pay for the Bill and Farndale reservoir, the river authority came in and it was sug-

gested by Sheffield and Hull that the river authority should build it. On 27th March, 1968, the river authority undertook to build the sluices and the reservoir and adopted a recommendation that the financing of the scheme should be by contributions by those directly benefiting—Sheffield and Hull.
There was a public local inquiry on 14th May, 1968, into the charging scheme on this basis. At the inquiry the river authority said, "Support this scheme because Sheffield and Hull will pay the whole of the capital cost".
On 16th August, 1968, the Minister directed that any cost to be defrayed by the scheme should be a charge on abstractors generally. On 27th November, 1968, having been so directed by the Minister—who, as we have seen, is now pressing for this Bill to get a Second Reading—the river authority meekly rescinded the March resolution on which the public local inquiry had been held and said that the cost of constructing the reservoir and sluices was to be borne generally.
I regard this as an important matter of principle. My constituents have sunk boreholes into the natural lake, which in the last debate I was told was impossible and have got water from there. Our capital expenditure is a great deal higher than that of other water authorities. We pay a domestic water rate of 2s. 8d. in the whereas Sheffield pay is. 6d. in the £ for water and Hull is about to pay Is. 6d. in the £. It is quite wrong that these two authorities, who may be described as being like the Foolish Virgins in the Bible story, should get their water at so much lower a price than my constituents who have taken the precaution of seeing that their lamps were lit and have this burden of 2s. 8d. placed upon them.
This is a very dangerous precedent. Sitting in front of me on the Liberal Bench is a very prominent hon. and learned Member representing a Welsh constituency. We have to consider what might happen in future. Suppose Birmingham wants water and goes to Wales and builds a great new reservoir in Wales. Will the Welsh have to contribute to Birmingham's water undertaking? If so, I think Birmingham will find it rather difficult to extract the money from Wales, and even the Minister will find that difficult.
I ask the House to pass this Instruction. I believe a mistake was made. I


believe Hull and Sheffield do not want to penalise my constituents with reference to water which is for their benefit. There are financial ways to arrange this so that a proportion of the capital cost is levied on each authority as an annual contribution in respect of the amount of benefit. There is no difficulty about such a financial arrangement. I hope, Mr. Speaker, that I have spoken as briefly as I promised earlier. This is an entirely simple point and I hope that the House will accept the Instruction. We have had a little disagreement, but I hope that now both sides of the House will see the absolute justice of this proposal.

10.25 p.m.

Mr. Kevin McNamara: Because of what you have said, Mr. Speaker. I do not intend to take up very much time.
I feel that the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) spoke as a foolish virgin rather than as a wise one. He made a short but passionate plea for his constituents, which is something that I understand. I want to make a plea not only for my constituents, but also for his. Under the Water Resources Act we established a policy which I think will have had the support of all hon. Members, that in future no part of an area should have a selfish interest, a right to pre-empt water resources to the detriment to the rest of the country or its area, that the use of resources should be shared among the various people within an area and between particular interests.
The essential thing about the Bill is that both directly and indirectly the right hon. Gentleman's constituents would benefit from developments within industry and from the added amenity value in Yorkshire as a whole resulting from having this very important system of water supply. It will spread the load and cost equally, and I urge the House to reject the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion. The additional cost works out at a third of a penny per thousand gallons to the consumer, which is very little indeed.
At the same time, I concede that the water board has come back with the creation of a far more equitable scheme than the original scheme.

10.27 p.m.

Sir Harry Legge-Bourke: I rise to speak only because of my great concern about the results of the Instruction being passed that might follow for every river authority in the country.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) has every entitlement to feel passionately about the Bill and to do everything he can to protect the interests of his constituents. None of us will complain of him doing that. He cited the White Paper which preceded the 1963 Act, but I hope that he has also read Sections 58, 59 and 60 of the Act. He will find that nowhere in them is there embodied the sentence from the White Paper which he quoted. When Ministers introduce White Papers, they know as well as every hon. Member that, whatever they may say in debate on the White Paper, what matters is in the Statute, and there is nothing in the Act to oblige river authorities to relate their charge strictly to the beneficiaries.

Mr. Turton: I am sure that my hon. Friend does not want to do me an injustice. This is being done under Section 81 of the Act, which lays down in subsection (3) that:
An agreement under this section may contain such incidental and consequential provisions (including provisions of a financial character) …".
That is to cover the very points in the White Paper.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: If I have my right hon. Friend right, it is a permissive matter, not obligatory. Having been chairman of a number of Bills dealing with water supplies, I know what appalling embarrassment can be caused to a Committee dealing with an opposed Private Member's Bill if it has instructions from the House. The House may have arrived at them in good faith, but it could not possibly have known all the facts. I recollect being on the Committee dealing with the Kennet and Avon Canal. On that occasion we were told that the lock gates in the canal must be left in exactly the state that they were taken over. As half were rotting it was a pretty preposterous condition. If we give this Instruction to the Committee we ought to make up our minds whether we know who will be the sole beneficiaries. The more I look at the


Bill and listen to the debate the more convinced I become that no one can know accurately who the beneficiaries are.
To give this Instruction would put the Select Committee in an intolerable position and would establish a principle which would throw river authorities into a state of chaos. It is opening the flood gates, in another sense, which will result in practically every general charge being challenged when imposed by river authorities. My right hon. Friend seemed to suggest that river authority engineers tended to indulge in extravaganzas if they are not watched. There are no more dedicated public servants than these men. Those who serve on river authorities do not indulge in unfair treatment of those affected by the work of the authority. It is a very unenviable task. I am convinced that there is plenty of scope within the Statute without any special instruction being given to enable this authority to take account of the differing benefits, if they can be determined, and to vary its charge if need be, should it be shown that unless charges are varied unfairness will take place.
Hon. Members should ask themselves: is it fair that a regional scheme such as this should be spread over the whole body of extractors? It is significant that some of the main contributors to the cost of the work, not least the Central Electricity Generating Board, together with industries in the area, have accepted this method of financing.
I hope that the House will reject this Instruction for two reasons. It will put the Select Committee in an intolerable position and, secondly, if it was upheld it would be virtually impossible to implement in the way intended.

Mr. Houghton: I hope that the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) will not press this Motion. I am sure that the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) is right. This is a complicated matter and it is far better to let it go to the Select Committee. There are three phases, there are complexities of capital expenditure, problems of identifying beneficiaries. Those of us who opposed the Bill have had to swallow the camel and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not

strain at the gnat. This is a minor issue compared with the importance of the scheme as a whole. It is better to let the Bill go to the Select Committee unfettered, without Instruction. Let it then come back to the House for debate.

10.35 p.m.

Mr. Michael Jopling: I will speak briefly in support of my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton). I went into the opposite Lobby to him in the previous Division; I supported the Bill. I must begin by declaring an interest, in that I live in and pay rates in the area of the water board which is an abstractor in this region and which would suffer, but it is not from that point of view that I make my contribution.
May I follow up what my right hon. Friend said about areas of the country which are heavy exporters of water? I represent an area in the Lake District which is a very heavy exporter of water, and the proposal would put an iniquitous burden on my area. The right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) said that this is a minor matter. So it may be for people living in urban conurbations, but it is of vital importance to people who live in the sparsely populated areas which are in general large-scale water exporters.
The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) said that water resources should be shared, and I do not argue with this, but he skirted round the problem of who should pay. I cannot see why the cost of these works should not be borne by those who benefit from them. He quoted a figure of one-third of a penny per thousand gallons. This may appear to be a small amount in North Yorkshire, where the rainfall tends to be low and where the total volume of exportable water also tends to be low, but I shudder to think how heavy this burden would be to my constituency.
In the recent report of the Water Resources Board on page 40 three projects for investigation by 1972 in my constituency are mentioned—the Killington reservoir near Kendal, the Barrowbeck reservoir near Tebay and the Hawes Water enlargement. If the principle which we are debating were extended to an area like my constituency an intolerable and unfair burden would be placed on us.

Mr. John M. Temple (City of Chester): Would my hon. Friend agree that, if this principle were pursued, it would prejudice the Morecambe Bay barrage scheme, which will be financed on the water charges account, and will therefore be impracticable unless there is a proper precept on the water charging scheme?

Mr. Jopling: I hope that a scheme as large as the Morecambe Bay scheme, part of which is in my constituency, would be financed on a national basis, and that an unfair burden would not be put on my constituents just because they happen to be abstractors in the same area.
My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) said that this Instruction would open the floodgates. If this Instruction is passed, it will put an intolerable burden on the sparsely populated parts of the country where there happens to be a great deal of water to export.

10.39 p.m.

Sir David Renton: I happen to represent a water exporting area, in that we have one of the largest artificial lakes in the United Kingdom at Graffham Water in my constituency. I have always felt that it was tough on my constituents to have to pay the same flat rate charge for water supplied to them from Graffham Water as others pay. One contrasts it in one's mind with the principle that applies in the supply of coal.
Those hon. Members who represent coal-mining constituencies will recollect that people living in those areas expect to get their coal more cheaply than those who live in areas to which coal has to be sent. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] They get it cheaper. It is a well known principle which is not contested on either side of the House. [An HON. MEMBER: "But it is."] By analogy one would expect that those who live in areas that export water would get their water marginally more cheaply. Therefore, one's instinct is to support my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton).
In trying to guess what is likely to happen tonight, it would appear that the issue is likely to be left open. I hope that those with responsibility in this matter, whether on the Select Committee of this House or on river authorities, will bear in mind that there is a quite sound

analogy in the supply of coal and in the supply of other commodities, an analogy which should fairly be applied to those areas from which the water comes.

10.42 p.m.

Mr. Denis Howell: This has been an interesting little debate, but I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) when he says that the principle which the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) and his right hon. and hon. Friends are trying to invoke is a serious one and would have serious repercussions.
The Water Resources Board in its 5th Annual Report for the year ended 30th September, 1968, said:
We estimate that the quantities consumed for the public supply, for industry, for power stations and for agriculture will need to be doubled by the end of the century.
That means that the amount of public works to be carried out in respect of the water industry in the next thirty years will be equal to all of that which has been undertaken in the last 100 years. With that factor in mind, one understands the magnitude and significance of what the right hon. Gentleman is proposing.
The right hon. Gentleman spoke about the imposition on his constituents and one would, of course, expect him to do so. I was going on to make the point that his constituents would get rateable value from these works being undertaken in his constituency. I am advised, however, that in the case of reservoirs erected by river authorities there appears to be a deficiency in the Act, but I am glad to take the opportunity to say that the Government intend to take the opportunity to put that matter right so that the financial burden on his constituents, which he has properly drawn to our attention, will be less arduous than he possibly thinks.
Whatever may be thought about the principle of the sharing of water resources, this was properly decided when the matter came before the House in the Water Resources Bill, which is now an Act. I sat on the Committee which considered that measure and the whole principle related to the sharing of costs in the supply of such a major commodity as water. That is what that legislation was all about.
I had hoped from my researches to have produced the interesting piece of information that both the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton and his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) voted for that Bill on Second Reading. Alas, I have to tell the House that such was the unanimity over that Bill that there was no vote. The Second Reading was given by general agreement. At least they were not able, no doubt because they were both members of the Government at that time, to come to the House and argue against that legislation. [Interruption.] If they were not members of the Government, that removes the excuse for their not coming and making a fuss in the House.

Sir D. Renton: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman wishes to get this right. In what he has said about the sharing of financial responsibility having been decided, he may have overlooked Section 81(3) of the 1963 Act, under which it is clear that it is open to those concerned to make flexible financial arrangements if they wish, and that that could involve a departure from the strict principle of sharing.

Mr. Howell: I remember the subsection very well. We spent hours on it in Committee. However, I do not think that the flexibility involved in it can be interpreted in the way that the right hon. and learned Gentleman seeks to interpret it.
I come back to the point made by the hon. and gallant Member for Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke). If this Instruction were passed, it would be impossible for any Select Committee to devise a form of words in law to make sense of it.
The right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton was extremely parochial in his attitude to the general principle and did not get it entirely right. The beneficiaries are not confined to Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham and Hull, and it is from those people that the right hon. Gentleman would seek to get more money. The Bill empowers the river authority to run a pipeline northwards from the reservoir to discharge water into the River Esk in order that it shall be available, if needed, for a new potash industry and for Scarborough. It is impossible to assess that at the moment. Another important feature is that the water delivered to Sheffield,

Barnsley and Rotherham will be discharged as treated effluent into the catchment area of the Don, where it will sustain increased demands for industrial purposes from that river. How can any Select Committee work that through?
The proposition before the House is one which on principle has previously been decided against and, in practice, would be impossible to administer.

10.48 p.m.

Mr. Turton: I have been very influenced not by what the Minister of State has said but by what my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) has said. He pointed out that, if we pass this Instruction, we are restricting the discretion of the Select Committee. On his assurance that the Committee will have power so to alter the charging scheme as to make it fair for my constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland (Mr. Jopling), I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Orders of the Day — WHITE FISH AUTHORITY (PUBLICITY SCHEME)

10.49 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. James Hoy): I beg to move,
That the White Fish Authority Publicity Scheme Confirmatory Order 1970, a draft of which was laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.
Hon. Members who are interested in the fishing industry are well aware of the general background to this scheme; white fish consumption at just over 16 lbs. per head per annum is far from buoyant; in addition, there are fluctuations in supply which cause problems for all sectors of the industry. All this means that, even when first-hand prices recover—as they are doing at the moment—there are still doubts about investment in new vessels or in new techniques of handling or marketing fish.
In these circumstances, the White Fish Authority published—over a year ago—notice of the scheme which is before the House tonight and which was approved in another place last week. It proposes the collection of a small levy to be spent on sales promotion, which will thereby


benefit the whole industry; the machinery of collection will be the same as has been used for the authority's general levy, which in the major ports is collected by the trawler owners' associations acting as agents of the authority; the amount will be ¾d. a stone, and it will apply without discrimination to British landings and to imports, including direct landings by foreign vessels.
The yield is estimated at about £400,000 a year, which is, of course, much larger than the sums that the authority has been able to devote to publicity in the past, but is not excessive for a scheme which one of the trade newspapers has called the authority's first adult publicity scheme. I shall be coming in a moment to the unsatisfied critics of the scheme, but I think that in fishery debates in this House the positive aspects sometimes go by default, and I want to get them on the record.
The strategy of the campaign will be worked out by the authority in full consultation with the industry, and the scheme provides for a publicity advisory committee. Planning has already taken place involving catchers, processors, friers, inland wholesalers and fishmongers. Some of these are, of course, more enthusiastic than others, but they all recognise that they are involved in a collective effort by the authority on behalf of, and in the name of, the whole industry. They also recognise that success in marketing is not achieved by publicity campaigns alone, but calls for hard work and a high quality product. The scheme can, however, create a climate in which the marketing efforts of the industry have a much improved chance of success.
I said that I would come to the objections. These come mainly from the port wholesalers, and, indeed, they put their case to me personally before my right hon. Friends decided that it was right to confirm the scheme. I listened very carefully to their views, but concluded that their case was not proven. Tonight, therefore, I would strongly urge the port wholesalers to cease their boycott of the advisory committee, and, instead, to see how far their arguments carry conviction with other sectors of the industry. I fail to understand how they can boycott

this committee and at the same time tell hon. Members that coastal wholesalers are not being allowed to play an advisory rôle.
My right hon. Friends have taken far more seriously another contention of the port wholesalers: namely, that a scheme of statutory control of quality should have had higher priority than the publicity scheme. I have some sympathy with this view, but, in fact, work is already being done by the authority and by the catching side of the industry to encourage the proper handling and storage of fish. However, this work can succeed only if there is a strong and sustained market for high quality fish to recompense those who invest in providing it.
In conclusion, it would perhaps be surprising if after all these years when no White Fish Authority scheme has reached this stage, the first to do so proved welcome to every sector of the industry. The present scheme, however, is supported by a majority in the industry, and will provide a substantial service for all sectors in return for a very modest levy. I invite the House to approve it.

10.54 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Wall: As the Minister has said, this scheme provides for a levy of 0·75 pence per stone for a publicity scheme costing £400,000. This is at the same time as the increase in the general levy from one penny to 1·2 pence per stone. So the total increase asked by the White Fish Authority is 1·95 pence. This seems a rather extraordinary figure. I wonder what will happen when we take to decimalisation.
The scheme does not apply to shellfish. The levy is returned on exports and it is repaid on fishmeal or fish used for canning, animal foods, and so on. I asked the Minister the other day whether this was not rather a clumsy idea, first taking the levy and then returning it. Paragraph 7 of the scheme makes provision for the collection, and I should like to know how much this will cost.
This is the third in the Government's trilogy—first the publicity scheme, second the increase in the general levy and third the minimum price for Scotland, which is needed to strengthen the market. In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, East (Sir J. Gilmour) who had asked what objections there had been to


the scheme, the Secretary of State for Scotland said on 19th February:
These objections, briefly, were that the prerequisites of an advertising campaign were a United Kingdom statutory minimum prices scheme, quality control of fish to be marketed and limitation of imports."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th February, 1970; Vol. 796, c. 191.]
We on this side would largely agree with that suggestion. The minimum price scheme for Scotland has been approved by the Government in an announcement on 26th February, and we wonder what they have in mind for England and as regards the other two prerequisites.
I turn now to the White Fish Authority's view of the scheme. In the brief sent to many hon. Members, they say that this scheme was proposed 18 months ago, when there were rising catches and falling prices. Now the situation is exactly the opposite. They say that this has necessitated a redesign of the scheme and that its object now is
To persuade housewives principally and other consumers secondarily to pay higher prices for fish; a food which people tend to look upon with a feeling of apathy and boredom; and about which many housewives lack confidence when preparing.
They say that there had been certain important developments—first, the growth of prepacked fish, second, the decline in the number of fishmongers, third, the increased relative importance of the fish friers, and, fourth, the decline in the number of catchers, particularly in the distant water section of the fleet.
They conclude:
We must now be concerned basically with changing attitudes to, and increasing awareness of, fish rather than primarily increasing consumption to eliminate a substantial surplus of fish landings.
In other words, we want to educate the housewife to the fact that she must pay a reasonable price for her fish and not try necessarily to increase consumption. They intend to use the media of women's magazines, cinema and television to do this. They also say that the scheme has been agreed by the Publicity Liaison Committee of the White Fish Authority, except by the representatives of the wholesale fish merchants, who boycotted the meeting.
This view of the White Fish Authority was strongly endorsed in a leading article in the Fishing News of 20th February. It

referred to an important conference in Canada, which said—this is the universal view now—that the trend is away from cheap fish and that attention must therefore be paid to marketing and advertising to the public that, although catches go down, that is no reason for relaxing advertising efforts and that the industry should try to turn housewives to new species of fish and that this may mean more expenditure than this levy, which is raising some £400,000.
The article concluded:
This scheme would be a base from which to direct sales publicity to species which may still lack a market. It may also be used to tell people why they are having to pay more for their fish, and to encourage them to keep on buying. There is an opportunity here to raise the food status of fish, and to set the industry on a new level where all its members are adequately rewarded for their effort in catching and distributing it.
The House will agree that that is a strong endorsement of the scheme as proposed.
I want to examine the four recent developments mentioned by the White Fish Authority. First, the question of prepackaging. It seems to many of my hon. Friends that large firms such as Bird's Eye and Ross do their own advertising and that, though the scheme will help, it may be of marginal help only. Second, the fishmongers, the National Federation of Fishmongers, wrote to me saying:
… so far as the retail fishmonger is concerned this is a scheme for which the trade has been pressing for upwards of ten years and the sooner it can be got going the better".
The federation also said that it hopes that it can be given a say in the running of the scheme and in regard to the content of advertisements. The friers take broadly the same view.
As for the catchers, the British Trawlers' Federation Ltd. is fairly neutral. It believes that the scheme might be of some help in taking up surplus stock and might well promote better prices. The Scottish Trawler Federation, I understand, takes much the same view.
As for the inshore men, I quote from a letter I have received from the Fisheries Organisation Society:
All our fishermen's societies were consulted about the Authority's proposed publicity scheme. The most vehement objections came from those fishermen engaged in shell fishing. Their views were duly passed on to the White Fish Authority with the result that the latter


agreed to exclude shell fish from the levy, thus removing the shell fishermen's objections.
For the rest the fishermen who mainly depend on white fish raised no objections and some welcomed the idea of a scheme to boost the sale of fish.
Broadly speaking, it can be said that it is a position of neutrality or of qualified approval, except for the fishmongers who are greatly in favour of the scheme.
The other side of the story are the views of the port wholesalers, who strongly oppose the scheme. They, too, have sent a brief to many hon. Members on both sides. The brief is a long one. I shall summarise five of their most important objections. They say, first, that the earlier publicity campaigns conducted by the White Fish Authority have not been very effective and certainly did not dispose of gluts of fish. They say that magazine advertising was tried before and failed; why try it again? They say that there has been little consultation with them and that, when objections were raised when the scheme was put to various merchants' organisations at the ports, their views were disregarded and that probably the total sum to be raised is too small to be effective. They say that in other parallel schemes—for example, for milk and eggs—the producer pays the levy, whereas in this scheme the middlemen is to pay the levy. They say that a quality control scheme would probably be of more use. They go on to say categorically that, if the House in its wisdom approves this scheme, they will not pay the levy.
I want briefly to examine these views. First, the allegation about the failure to remove a glut is answered by a comment in the Fish Trades Gazette of 28th February. I quote from two paragraphs from that publication:
It is not a promotion scheme aimed to stimulate sales at times of glut, but one that will try and make the very mention of fish one that conjures up thoughts of a good meal rather than a repulsive smelly stop-gap snack…Therefore, if we are to sell fish at all it is important to convince the consumer that it is a luxury product and a food to be sought after.
That should answer the first of the criticisms.
Then it is said that in this case that middleman is to pay, whereas the producer pays the other levies. I imagine that the cost of the levy will be passed

on to the consumer; therefore, it is as broad as it is long. After all, the object of the scheme is to persuade the housewife that it is worth while to pay a higher price for fish.
Then there is the contention about lack of consultation. There was a failure of communication, it would seem, but I am not accusing the White Fish Authority or the merchants. Obviously, they have got very much at cross purposes. I hope that, if the scheme goes through, the wholesalers will not boycott it and will not refuse to pay the levy, which would be illegal, anyway. I hope that tact will be used on both sides and that there will be more co-operation, for the common good of the industry.
The final objection—that it is too small a sum to be effective and that quality control is needed before such a scheme is introduced—seems valid, certainly with regard to quality control. The Minister seemed to go some way towards this view. My hon. Friends and I suggest that the priority should be for quality control, that there should be a minimum price scheme for the United Kingdom and that some steps should, if possible, be taken for import control.
Incidentally these are all recommendations which were made by the fishery sub-committee of the Select Committee on Agriculture.
We therefore have doubts about the wisdom and timing of the scheme. We believe that the priority is wrong, that good fish does not necessarily need more advertising—indeed, if the scheme is concentrated on cod it could possibly have the opposite effect to that intended—and we believe that big firms which are the main users of cod already have their own schemes. The W.F.A. scheme may be of marginal assistance, but why sting the wholesaler on top of an increase in the general levy?
We are being asked to approve a levy which will raise £400,000, which is nearly as much as the W.F.A. spends on research and development, which I believe to be its most important function. Is this a justified measure or is it just a stop-gap to give the W.F.A. something more to do? We should bear in mind that the administrative expenses of the W.F.A. are already over £¼ million out of a total expenditure of about £1½ million. Would it not be better to


consider the whole future of the W.F.A., as the Select Committee suggested?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Sidney Irving): Order. Not on this Order, I am afraid.

Mr. Wall: Unfortunately that Select Committee was abolished before that could be done.
If the House approves the Order, the Minister should consider whether there should be a three-year limit on the scheme. Some of my hon. Friends may feel that expenditure of about £1½ million—£400,000 or more for three years—is too much for this purpose. I will listen to their views with interest, and some of my hon. Friends may have stronger views that I have expressed and may, therefore, wish to oppose the Order in the Lobby. We must wait and see what is said on both sides of the House.

11.8 p.m.

Mr. Donald Dewar: I was interested to hear the Minister say, and it is a nice euphemism, that the scheme had been received with more enthusiasm in certain quarters than in others. One thing seems clear; that there is a striking lack of agreement about the worth of this venture.
There has been a lack of harmony over this matter which I find alarming. While it is true, as we have been told on a number of occasions, that the port wholsale fish merchants are opposed to the scheme—one might say that they are bitterly opposed to it—opposition is not confined to that side of the trade.
The hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) was rather cautious when he described, for example, the Scottish Trawler Federation as taking up a position of neutrality. I have received some strong representations on the subject. Perhaps unlike the B.T.F., the members of the S.T.F. object absolutely to the scheme and join with the wholesalers in their general attitude towards it. I have no doubt that hon. Gentlemen opposite will say that Scottish inshore white fish producers are in exactly the same position. It is clear that in Scotland opposition to this proposal runs deep and wide and cuts right across the entire fishing industry.
There appear to be a number of reasons for this. There is, for example, a general scepticism about the possibility of the scheme being successful. Reference has been made to the amount that is likely to be collected and whether it will be an adequate basis for launching a project of this sort. I am advised that there have been successful generic product campaigns—that for milk is an example—but there are some who believe that after an initial spurt in demand there is in the long-term little to be gained from an advertising campaign of this sort.
There is an underlying lack of confidence in the White Fish Authority, an organisation which enjoys a measure of disrespect in certain quarters which I find disquieting. There is, I believe, a future for the Authority, but I endorse the need for a look at its standing in the industry and the scale of its future operations.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: We cannot discuss that on this Order.

Mr. Dewar: That was what is optimistically described as a passing reference which will not be pursued.
It has been explained to us that the idea of the scheme is to tempt the housewife to spend more on quality fish and not necessarily to increase the amount of fish bought in Britain—or at least not in the first place. This is all very well, but the trouble is that the supply of good quality fish is not necessarily elastic and if one stimulates a great deal of demand one may find that one cannot meet it. The housewife who goes in and asks for quality fish and finds her request not immediately met is faced with alternatives. Either she can say "Goodbye" and go round the corner and buy lamb chops, which is presumably a defeat for the promoters of the scheme, or she can buy lower quality fish in the same shop. This may be of help to the industry as a whole but is possibly not the effect which is wanted by the inshore producers or the fresh fish fleet which have to help foot the bill. Further imports might be stimulated if demand exceeded supply, housewives buying fish of a quality below that praised in the advertisements may suffer a reaction against fish. The effect could be the opposite of that intended.
I have sympathy with those who have argued that the priorities are wrong. We


are grateful that the Minimum Price Scheme has now been ratified for Scotland and Northern Ireland, but many of us are sorry that that is not a United Kingdom scheme, and feel that if one goes in for the campaign to promote quality fish then quality control is the essential background against which such a scheme can operate efficiently.
Looking at the White Fish Authority report on fish in school meals, I find that they pointed out exactly the effect of trying to project fish as a quality dish and then not providing a product of the necessary standard. When they did trials with fish of varying degrees of freshness and took fillets which had been on the ice for some time, even the children rebelled. The phrase used was "a mass of adverse comment", which is doubtless a polite way of describing what the children said, and "plate wastage"—to use the technical term—"escalated dramatically". If one sells on quality and does not ensure that the quality of the fish is maintained, one may expect the same "adverse comment" and that the scheme will become thoroughly self-defeating.
I hope that the Minister will think hard about the scheme and the framework in which it will operate so that we do not have it out of phase, trying to promote a product which the industry, through no fault of its own, is not in a position to produce in the necessary quantities. We all sympathise with the idea of trying to improve the image of fish and recognise it is important, but I am not happy about a situation in which there is so much organised and widespread opposition to the scheme. If it is to get off the ground and the Advisory Committee is to be a useful and effective group, much remains to be done.
I am told that the Aberdeen Wholesalers Fish Merchants' Association has circularised its 200 members on this scheme and received 154 replies. Of the 154 who have bothered to reply, a fairly high proportion of them, more than 140, allege they will not pay the publicity levy even if it goes through the House. This may be an unreasonable attitude in the eyes of the Minister, but it seems to be a real and fiercely held view, and it does not augur well for the success of the launching of this venture.
In view of the opposition, and in many ways the reasonable objections put forward in principle in terms of the priorities and the machinery which is available to allow the industry to benefit from the money collected, I hope that the Minister will look again at this matter and not rush it through.

11.16 p.m.

Mr. J. M. L. Prior: I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar) on his excellent speech. I do not think that he overstated the position at all, and I join him in many of his remarks. When one comes to the subject of schools being supplied with fish, one knows that they are supplied on the basis of contract. Quality never comes into it. The schools have the cheapest fish that they can get, and it is no wonder that the children do not like it.
I thought that the Minister bent over backwards to try to make out that the scheme was opposed by only a very small section of the industry. In fact, he went so far as to say that he had come to the conclusion that the objections to the scheme were "not proven". I understand from one of my hon. Friends that in Scottish law "not proven" means that someone is guilty, but it cannot be proved. I think that that just about sums up the scheme.
The Minister went on to say that he did not consider that £400,000 was excessive, and that this had been recognised as the first adult publicity scheme which the White Fish Authority had introduced. If by adult he means that it has grown up from £80,000 to £400,000, he is probably right, but I do not think that in many other senses it can be described as adult.
I cannot think of anything more nebulous than the Publicity Advisory Committee if we are to get agreement in the fishing industry on what is the right method of publicising the fish. If someone believes that this is the best way to do it, he will believe anything. I am not criticising the firm which has done the research and produced the scheme, Charles Barker & Sons Ltd. No one in the Conservative Party would criticise its scheme. After all, it was the man who until a year ago was the chief publicity officer of the Conservative Party who organised this scheme, and I am full of


praise for the way that he has put across an extraordinarily bad case.

Mr. Dewar: He has had a lot of practice.

Mr. Prior: First he had to convince the White Fish Authority. Having convinced the Authority, he has convinced the Government. I have no hesitation in saying that he made a much better job of publicity for the Conservative Party than he is ever likely to do for the authority or the industry. But he is an excellent man, and I think that this is about the only wise step that the authority has taken.
I do not like the authority at all. I think that it is a useless organisation. The extraordinary thing about the authority is that one cannot find anyone to say a good word about it. No section of the industry will go out of its way to support the authority. In agriculture, which has similar authorities, one can at least find some support for the new Fatstock Authority or for the old Pig Industry Development Authority, but for the White Fish Authority, which has been going for 18 years, one can find hardly a single supporter.
I see that you are getting agitated, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but the White Fish Authority is to spend £400,000 on this project. It has a levy at the moment of £500,000 and it is to add to that by collecting another £400,000 for publicity. The administrative costs of the authority at the moment come to about £260,000, which is half the cost of the levy that it is collecting currently. No one can say that an organisation which is spending half its total receipts from the industry on administration is a well run authority.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot pursue that theme on this Order. The principles are established by the Sea Fish Industry Act, 1951, and only the scheme can be discussed on the Order.

Mr. Prior: For all that, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the authority is going virtually to double its levy as a result of the Order. Surely it is not out of place to make some comment on the administration of the Authority which will collect and then spend this vast sum of money.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am afraid that the only question of administration we can discuss is that related to the publicity scheme.

Mr. Prior: Then I will not pursue the matter. I have plenty to say about the publicity scheme itself. But before getting on to that, I would refer again to the right hon. Gentleman's speech.
Some of us have been circulated by the National Association of Frozen Food Producers, the members of which spend far more money on publicity than the authority can ever hope to spend. They are very annoyed that they have not been properly consulted. The right hon. Gentleman said that all sections of the industry had been consulted. Why were not the frozen food producers consulted? They buy 29 per cent. of the fish of the whole industry, yet they have not seen a Minister throughout these consultations. They are spending £1,282,000 on publicity, yet the right hon. Gentleman did not think it worth while to see them before accepting the scheme. Why, I fail to understand.
I am told that generic advertising, as it is called, has been a great success for eggs, milk and tea, to mention only three items. But eggs are eggs, milk, up to a point, is milk, and tea, up to a point, is tea. Fish, however, can be everything. It is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. To think that one can put eggs, milk, tea and fish into the same category seems to be stretching the imagination rather too far.
The Milk Marketing Board spent £3,830,000 on advertising milk last year; the Egg Marketing Board, up to a year or so ago, spent £1,200,000 on advertising eggs; the breakfast cereal food industry, which had a turnover of £44 million last year, spent £4,600,000 on advertising. How on earth the White Fish Authority thinks that it is going to make any impact by spending £400,000, I do not know. It has a much smaller proportion of the turnover of the industry and I do not think it will perform any useful job.
I rather suspect that the White Fish Authority will come back and say that it has failed to promote fish in the way it wanted to with £400,000 and it must have a further levy and put it up to £800,000. In a way, if one supports this idea, it


would be more sensible to go for £800,000 or £1 million rather than £400,000, but the authority knows that it could not go for more than £400,000 because the Government would not approve it. So the authority goes for £400,000 because it thinks it can get away with that, although I and many others think it can do nothing with that sum.
As the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, the authority has no control over the quality of the product and very often it is not the product which the customer wants. At least in the frozen food industry, which is taking 30 per cent. of the fish of the country, people can go into a shop and get a branded article and know exactly the quality of what they get. I believe the White Fish Authority is building on sand. It is imposing on an unwilling and disorganised marketing system an advertising campaign which it does not want.
The real trouble is that the authority has failed over a number of years to provide the industry with any form of leadership. I do not blame it for that because, looking back over the years, I do not think it is the right sort of authority and I do not think it is the job of this kind of organisation to provide leadership. It is now trying to impose on the industry an advertising campaign which it hopes will put right some of its former inadequacies. To use an agricultural metaphor, instead of getting to the roots of the problem—which are better organisation in the docks and fish markets and better organisation in getting fish to the consumer—it is giving a top dressing. It leaves everything as it is and then adds a top dressing of publicity. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member knew anything about agriculture, he would know that that was a very stupid remark.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Public Building and Works (Mr. Charles Loughlin): Does the hon. Member know anything about the fishing industry?

Mr. Prior: I know a great deal more about the industry than does the hon. Member, but that would not be difficult.
It is not good enough to spend £400,000 on a scheme of this nature. The problem—and it raises a very serious issue—is whether this country can go on

affording to have authorities and to run schemes of this kind. We toyed with these schemes and authorities for a number of years after the war and we hoped that they would be successful, but the experience of the last few years has shown that these things just do not work. The publicity schemes have failed. The authority has failed. It would be much more sensible of the Government if they recognised the facts and gave up support of the White Fish Authority, disbanded it, and allowed the very capable people who are members of it to do other jobs and to serve the country to greater advantage.

11.30 p.m.

Mr. Kevin McNamara: I listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior) with amazement, if only because of his comments about my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Public Building and Works.
I am at a loss to understand exactly what the Opposition line is. The hon. Gentleman stated that we are not raising enough money to have a viable scheme, but his hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) criticised the amount of money being raised as too much of an imposition. We would like to know whether they prefer the balance that has been struck, to have no scheme, or to have a scheme that is more highly financed.
What some of my hon. Friends think to be one of the drawbacks of the firm promoting the scheme seems to me on reflection to be something of an advantage because, if what the hon. Member for Lowestoft said about its success in selling the Conservative Party is right, then when they have a good product like quality fish it should be able to do very well.
We have had a series of niggling comments about the White Fish Authority. Such statements are very damaging to the authority's morale and to the industry as a whole. Until recently the fishing industry was one of the most disorganised industries in the country in terms of its production, distribution and marketing. It has been chaotic. The only common factor that seemed to link the various aspects of the industry was the White Fish Authority. It is a highly


individualistic industry, the members of which are quick to complain and blame everybody but themselves for every sort of situation. The authority, under a series of distinguished leaders, and with many devoted servants, has done a very good job for the industry, which we should recognise. I say this as one who has not always felt perfectly in tune with all the ideas of the authority.
If we accept that one of our principal aims for the fishing industry is a recognition that we have a product which we want to sell and sell to a more discriminating market, we must have a scheme of this nature. It is very sad that whenever anything new is suggested the Jeremiahs within the industry throw up their hands saying, "We cannot afford it. It will not work. We have always got on well enough in the past." In fact, the industry has only just maintained roughly the same sale of fish. It has not been able to increase its market. It has not been able to capture people's attention in the way that many would wish.
We have said in the past when we have discussed the problems facing the industry that one of the things it seemed to lack was a vigorous and aggressive advertising campaign and attitude towards the public and the market. I think that the scheme will both support private schemes by firms within the industry and help create an image of fish that will give us a market that will enable us to expand, to pay the wages of the men in the industry, to give a fair return to the producers and the wholesalers, and to give the consumers a very good and well-priced product.
One of the main arguments is that quality fish of itself will sell. If that was correct, every time we have a glut it would sell, because in a glut we have the quality fish. But that is not the case. But when the port wholesalers tell us that it is the federation's opinion that the best method of selling fish is to have the highest quality in the shop and then it will sell itself, this is rather a remarkable performance for something that has been dead for a considerable time. I should have thought that there was need to bring to the attention of the consumer the fact that this high quality product exists.
This is all that the scheme seeks to do, something that many of us have asked for to be done for the industry for a long time. I urge my hon. Friends to support it.

11.36 p.m.

Sir John Gilmour: All of us would be united in trying to do anything to help the fishing industry to sell more fish.
My hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) quoted the reply that I had from the Secretary of State for Scotland. I think I could quote the situation colloquially by saying that the people who are interested feel that putting forward this scheme has got the thing arse over tit. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Perhaps "the cart before the horse" would be a more parliamentary way of putting it. But this is what the people who are interested in selling fish feel about it; and when one gets this sort of answer to a Question it makes one wonder whether the facts have been properly weighed up.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar) put his finger fairly and squarely on it when he asked, "Is it really the object of the exercise to sell more quality fish?" The answer came from my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior), who said that 29 per cent. of the fish is advertised at over £1 million. I could not help feeling that one has to spend all this money to sell the fish at all.
Those of us who are interested in inshore fishing in Scotland have to decide where the money that is to be collected is to be spent—on promoting quality fish or on trying to get rid of fish that would not be sold unless this money was produced—and whether the £400,000 will sell this fish. From the figures that the hon. Member for Lowestoft produced, obviously £400,000 will not sell the fish.
We want to know the object behind the scheme. It is easy to take a broad outlook, and everyone who is interested in the fishing industry is delighted if more fish can be sold. But this is not enough. We have to know on what section of the product that is put on the market the money is to be spent. I hope we shall be told where the money will be spent. If we do not know, I do not see how we can possibly approve the Order.

11.38 p.m.

Mr. James Johnson: The debate seems to have taken a queer turn. Since just after eleven o'clock, the other side of the House has taken up a new posture. Hon. Members opposite seem to take it upon themselves to pursue in an almost sinister fashion, if not a hunt, almost a vendetta against the White Fish Authority. I wonder what lies behind this.
The hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) and I were on the Select Committee, and we questioned the chief executive, Mr. Meek, about the functions of the Authority, and the advertising campaign came into it, and he agreed—I do not think I am betraying anything—that the authority should perhaps think of ceasing its existence. That is what we are getting all the time across the Floor of the House in this vendetta. It has been suggested that the authority might consider that its existence could be justified only if it was given more money to do the job that it wished to do.
This is what is happening tonight. The authority is getting the thick end of £500,000 to do a job of advertising. This means giving to the housewife, to schools, to the general public, a fuller and deeper appreciation of what is the best fish. This is a laudable exercise. I am not going into the mechanics of it, or its function as opposed to the Civil Service. I am puzzled to know what lies behind the sly comments which are knocking this buffer organisation. I would have thought that the Opposition would accept that it has done a first-class job.
The Minister gave us a lucid explanation—

Mr. Prior: It was not very long.

Mr. Johnson: Sometimes Ministers can speak for too long, and then there is moaning on the benches opposite. Now we have this lucid, compact, clear, concise and intelligent exposition, and hon. Gentleman opposite are still moaning.

Mr. Prior: The hon. Gentleman must not construe anything said about the White Fish Authority as being an attack on individuals in the authority. We are talking about the authority, not the people within it.

Mr. Johnson: I am not a lecturer in social science. It is stupid to talk about an authority and try to divorce from it the people in it who do the work. Let us be helpful, not obscurantists sheltering behind semantics. I was at the last meeting when the Minister saw the fish merchants. I said in the House at Question Time that I thought that there had been some plain speaking—there always is from people who come off fish docks—but that it was an amicable meeting.
I appeal to people such as Mr. Jack Allison, President of the Port Merchants, to attempt to meet the Minister and the White Fish Authority and to pay the levy. They should not boycott it in this way; wiser counsels should prevail. I will do what I can in Hull. This lying back is a dead end.
The National Association of Frozen Food Producers said recently that the situation in the fishing industry had changed greatly in the 18 months since the scheme was launched. There is an article in Fishing News entitled "The Time to Advertise." The position has changed completely. The North-East Atlantic has been over-fished. Catches are falling and prices are rising. It is the worst time we have had since August/September, 1968. I foresee that fish will be in demand and will become a dear food. With fewer fish to be caught in the North-East Atlantic, I foresee the desire of small nations like Iceland to extend their fishing limits. I do not wish to be a Jeremiah, but this may lead to a quota for international fishing. In the same way as the number of seals and whales has diminished, so has the number of cod.
I have here a hand-out from the White Fish Authority, which says that the principal aim of the advertising campaign must now be:
To persuade housewives … and other consumers … to pay higher prices for fish; a food which people tend to look upon with a feeling of apathy and boredom.
I do not agree with this. I think that fish is a popular food, and I do not understand the hysteria about fish on the benches opposite. The conclusion of the advertising consultants is:
We must now be concerned basically with changing attitudes to, and increasing awareness of fish, rather than primarily increasing consumption to eliminate a substantial surplus of fish landings.


What does this mean? It is a very fine distinction—a distinction without a difference.
The purpose of advertising is to sell more of a given article. Fish is an article which will be in demand, and yet we are embarkintg on this expensive campaign to try to persuade people to buy more fish when there will not be enough fish to meet the demand.

Mr. John Wells: It is a waste of money. The advertising consultants are saying that there will be less fish to sell, yet prices will go up, and for some obscure reason the White Fish Authority wants £400,000 to advertise.

Mr. Johnson: I wish I had not given way. There is a smell of hypocrisy here. The hon. Gentleman is the first man to want advertising schemes for apples.

Mr. Wells: rose—

Mr. Johnson: I cannot give way. This is taking advantage of my good nature.

Mr. Wells: Be fair; give me a chance to answer.

Mr. Johnson: The only fish that I feel will be in reasonable supply in the future will be cod, and possibly coley. The White Fish Authority talks about selective advertising. The feeling is that we should think not only about such fish as cod and haddock and the like but about other types of fish. But it would take a lot of money and some very clever advertising to get the British housewife to think like the German housewives in terms of such fish as red fish, which we chuck back into the sea. It will be a difficult job to persuade our housewives to regard other sorts of fish as being as palatable as haddock and hake.
I wish the authority success and, unlike hon. Gentlemen opposite, I am not being cynical about this matter. I am a little sceptical about what will happen at the end of the day, but I wish its advertising campaign success. I hope that our fish merchants in the ports will come in on this scheme and will cease the boycott which up to the moment they have observed.

11.52 p.m.

Mr. Walter Clegg: I had some difficulty in following the hon.

Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. James Johnson), who said that he was not cynical about the scheme but sceptical, and then said that we should pass the Order.
I have had contacts with the fishing industry in Fleetwood for some years and I have never known the fish merchants there as angry as they are now. They are law-abiding citizens, and but, like the fish merchants in Hull, in Aberdeen and in Grimsby, they are now refusing to pay the levy. If the Order is passed, then they should pay it, but hon. Members must realise the anger that lies behind these events. I will mention some of the causes of the anger.
First, there was the matter of consultation. At the beginning neither the fishmongers nor the fish merchants were consulted. They were consulted by the White Fish Authority and by the Ministry of Labour, but they were not consulted as a body before the scheme was produced by the consultants. They represent the main distributors of fish within the United Kingdom, and yet it was not thought fit to see them. I wonder on whose advice that was done. It seems clear from the report that, for fear of starting rumours, the consultants were told not to go near the fishmongers or fish merchants. It may be that there was some direction to them not to be consulted. I have the evidence with me if the Parliamentary Secretary wishes to see it.
The consultants interviewed all sorts of people, including a sales psychologist, and they also took an opinion poll about people's habits with fish. They came to some remarkable conclusions. One earth-shaking conclusion they reached was
Fish is of course well known. Ninety-two per cent. of adults eat it.
Another was:
Why do people aged 35 and over eat fish?
The answer came like a thunderclap:
Because they like it.
A geat deal of money was spent in achieving these epoch-making discoveries.
A further conclusion they reached later in the report was as follows:
Another retail outlet for fish is the fryer selling fried fish and chips. But fish and chips is seen as something quite apart from fish.


One might as well part fish and chips as part Laurel and Hardy.
I emphasise that the fish fryers were not consulted about the scheme by the consultants. They were not even asked about it. The consultants went around the country to get a great deal of information which they could have got straight from the horse's mouth. There is therefore a deep grievance about consultation. They have felt all along that they were being presented with a fait accompli, and their views have been completely disregarded. They have been to the Minister and to the White Fish Authority, but they have not been able to get their point of view over.
The right hon. Gentleman has the virtue of always wanting to do what he considers best for the industry. However, there is a real clash of opinion about this advertising scheme. Those who have asked whether £400,000 will be enough have a point. What the consultants suggest and are trying to do is to change the eating habits of the nation. That will prove to be an extremely difficult and costly exercise. The comparative expenditures on commodities like milk and others which have been mentioned show what a tremendous amount of money is needed to change the nation's eating habits. They are extremely complex. One part of the country likes one sort of fish. Another part of the country likes a different sort. I do not believe that the £400,000 will be well spent on this purpose.
I take the point that quality control is needed, above all else, especially in the wet fish section. This money would be better spent on that, or on improving the landing facilities at Hull, Fleetwood, Grimsby and other ports than on the sort of advertising which is contemplated.
Since the consultants made their first report, there has been a complete change. In those days, we had falling prices and increasing catches. Now we have rising prices and falling catches. What differences are there between the scheme that was to fit the old situation and the scheme which is to fit the new one? I suspect that there is not much change, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can tell us something about it.
The merchants, the frozen food people and a great many other people are angry.
The right hon. Gentleman should take this Order back and look at it again.

11.58 p.m.

Mr. John Wells: As I said when I intervened in the speech of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. James Johnson), this is a sheer waste of money. The hon. Gentleman compared it with the publicity scheme for apples which I favour, but, in doing so, he has failed to see that the two are not parallel. Here are a falling supply of fish and increasing prices. The apple market is entirely different, with a Western European surplus and falling prices.
I want to raise with the right hon. Gentleman the letter of my constituent, Mr. Thomas, which I sent him on 2nd February, to which he replied on 25th February. Against the background of my constituent's experience of the general attitudes and complete incompetence of the White Fish Authority in its spending of public money, we should be loth to see any increase in levy powers given to it.
In the Explanatory Memorandum it is pointed out that, though the levy will be payable on fish meal, it will be repaid in due course. But that does not apply to the levy on fish meal in the recent general levy. The White Fish Authority is seeking to raise this levy in many directions, and not only for this direct publicity purpose. It is scrounging money from all sorts of people for all sorts of purposes, and I believe that we should curb its activities. It has been a bad spender of public money in the past, as have so many of these levy-based bodies. The whole issue should be re-examined, and I ask the right hon. Gentleman to take his Order away and reconsider it.

12 midnight.

Mr. Patrick Wolrige-Gordon: I oppose the levy for this scheme at present, and I do so in the most moderate language.
I do not doubt the good intentions of the W.F.A. in desiring to promote sales of fish, and advertising cannot but be of great help towards achieving such an enterprise. But I notice that it has taken the authority 19 years to come to this conclusion, so it obviously is not a matter which has ever struck anybody as being of tremendous urgency.
I believe that the British people are fed up with Government bodies promoting their business out of the proceeds of an arbitrary levy on that business. We on this side should keep a very careful eye indeed on any extension of that practice, particularly so tonight. The parliamentary ink is hardly dry on an Order proposing an increase in the levy to that body, and nobody is feeling very rich in Britain anyway. Five years of squeeze—[Interruption.]

Mr. Loughlin: The hon. Gentleman is too late.

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: It is a fair commentary on this country's position that the people who object to that are on the Government Front Bench.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We cannot have a commentary on this country's affairs on this order.

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: It was merely a passing reference.
To say that because fishing is doing well it is all right to put 0·75d. on the 0·2d. which has already gone on is unwise. Not long ago the fishing industry of this country was facing a tremendously serious crisis. We have heard it suggested that we may be facing another quite soon, and there are many indications overseas of serious crises in fishing industries in other countries.
I am not opposed to advertising as the means of promoting a market, provided that the control of that advertising is in the hands of those who depend upon the market. We all know of examples where advertisers have decided to cut down on their advertising budgets. They pay careful attention to the cost benefit of those budgets. But what attention will the fishing industry in the north of Scotland be able to pay to the cost benefit of this advertising campaign? What will it be able to do about it if it is not satisfied? I do not believe that it will be able to do anything. That is one reason why I make this protest.
The fishing industry in the north of Scotland produces and sells a quality product. If the amount of fish eaten in the schools or elsewhere in the rest of Great Britain today was anything like that consumed in the north of Scotland we would not need an advertising campaign.
Now fish is to be lumped together, from wherever it comes and whatever it is like. Fish, as has repeatedly been pointed out in the debate, is not one commodity; it is a mass of highly individual commodities, some of which sell traditionally well in some parts of the country and some in others. But generic advertising is no selling point for an advertising campaign on fish.
Some hon. Members suggested the example of eggs and others the example of milk. We know what happened to the egg with the lion that was advertised and what happened to the board which advertised it. If anybody profited from the campaign to sell eggs, it was the people who sold eggs privately.
Fish does not respond to a blanket type of treatment, even when trying to teach the housewife how to cook it or how to have a different attitude towards it.
Only last week, Sir John Hamilton, director of the Institute of Marketing, was reported to be telling Aberdeen:
Competition by the processed and frozen fish industries would operate effectively only if the marketing concept were fully understood and practised by top management in the fishing industry.
He also told the Aberdeen members to look at their unique selling assets. He asked what steps had been taken to encourage the world to buy fish from Aberdeen as opposed to a frozen packet from a department store. I am sure that Sir John Hamilton knows a lot about marketing, and that message is very different from the one from the W.F.A. which we are considering tonight.
Certainly it is possible to fault the fishing industry on its marketing and advertising and almost anything to do with it, but how different it is to say how to do it and provide advice and help to individuals, who respond and want to do a better job, instead of merely saying, as I fear we now will, that we will do it for them and produce this blanket scheme to which everyone has to contribute willy-nilly. That is a totally wrong approach to a fine, individual and independent industry, and one which will not work.
There are other solid reasons why this will not help. It may relieve glut—apparently, glut will not be with us for


a bit, but it will come again, since feast and famine always has in the fishing industry regardless of the price or the state of the market—but that glut will only reappear in a larger and more invincible form. If, as we expect, in the immediate future there will not be a glut anyway but a shortage, whatever the sentences which have been quoted by the consultants for the scheme may say, advertising will merely put up the price without selling more fish. If it does sell one more fish, that fish will inevitably have come from abroad. What is the good of that to us?

12.8 a.m.

Mr. Hoy: I have never before heard a Minister accused of taking too little time to speak. That was a novel complaint: normally, it is that Ministers take too long.
I cannot understand the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Wolrige-Gordon). He has such a selfish outlook—

Mr. John Wells: Shame.

Mr. Hoy: I wish that the hon. Member, who knows very little about this industry, would hold his tongue—

Mr. Wells: Mr. Wells rose—

Mr. Hoy: No, I will not give way. I have listened patiently to every word in this debate and I am entitled to say why I thought that the hon. Gentleman took a selfish point of view. What he was saying was, "In my part of the world, we sell good fish and do not need any help. Why should we help other people?" That is no argument at all, and that is why I say that he has a selfish outlook. In any sector of industry, I would hope that the economically prosperous would be willing to help the less prosperous.

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: The Parliamentary Secretary will do me the justice of accepting that my quarrel was with the method proposed to deal with that problem. I am all in favour of the W.F.A., or anyone who wants to take leadership in the industry, suggesting to those concerned ways in which they can do better—advertising, for one—but a blanket scheme is wrong.

Mr. Hoy: That hon. Gentleman is now changing his ground. He argued earlier that, because his part of the country was doing so well, it should not be expected to contribute to the wellbeing of other areas. This is what he meant by a blanket contribution.
The hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) put the case for and against very fairly. When he spoke about those in support of the scheme, he was talking about not only the catching side but about the fishmongers and the fish friers; anybody who knows anything about the fishing industry knows that the section of the community that is responsible for purchasing a very large proportion of the catch is the fish friers. As these people support the scheme, it is difficult to understand why a much smaller section should have received so much publicity tonight. I do not say that because they are unimportant—every section of the industry is important—but if there is an important consuming section it is the fish frying section and some respect should have been paid to its views.
It is said that we did not consult everybody concerned. We went out of our way to consult every section of the industry. When the port wholesalers asked if they could come and see me, I was only too willing to meet them. Not only did I meet them—

Mr. Clegg: I was not complaining about lack of consultation with the Minister or with the authority. My point was about consultation at the early stage.

Mr. Hoy: But I spent a considerable time with them. I could not agree with their point of view, but there is not a single representative who was at that meeting who would deny that they received a fair hearing and that they had ample time in which to put their point of view. I promised to take their point of view into consideration.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar) referred to the objections to the levy put forward by the Scottish interests. He will know that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland met representatives of the associations to hear their objections at first hand. My right hon. Friends have given very careful and sympathetic considerations to these and other objections. They felt bound to conclude,


however, that the objections were outweighed by the benefits that the industry as a whole could derive from the publicity campaign the authority had in mind, and they therefore confirmed the scheme.
Indeed, in putting forward their objections, the Scottish organisations stressed the need, as they saw it, for the establishment of three conditions before embarking upon a publicity campaign for fish. These were quality control, the introduction of a United Kingdom minimum price scheme, and limitation of imports.
Developments over the past few months have gone some way at least in this direction. First, agreement was reached some time ago with our Scandinavian E.F.T.A. partners on the introduction of minimum export price arrangements governing the prices at which frozen fish fillets from these countries will be landed here as a step towards securing greater market stability for all suppliers. That step was welcomed by every section of the House; the hon. Member for Haltemprice welcomed it, saying that he thought that it was a considerable step forward, and there was not one hon. Member opposite who objected to it.
Second, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland announced some days ago, Ministers have approved the White Fish Authority's scheme for the introduction of statutory minimum price arrangements for white fish sold at first hand in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. This is, therefore, a step forward, and I was surprised that hon. Members did not pay attention to it.
Hon. Gentlemen opposite will be aware that, despite our best endeavours to get agreement on this issue, considerable sections of the industry objected. However, the minimum price scheme, introduced with the full agreement of the Scottish catchers' organisations, could be a forerunner of similar developments for the United Kingdom, as a whole, should the industry decide to move in that direc-

tion. Nothing could b fairer than that. The various sections of the industry have said in the past that if we could get such a scheme operating, they might wish to follow suit.

The hon. Member for Haltemprice referred to quality control. The industry has recently paid much attention to this aspect, and there has been a considerable development of boxing at sea. I understand that this has met with the approval of those interested in the industry, and the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Stodart) will agree that this has been operative for a long time in the part of the world which we represent.

We had quite a job persuading the industry to adopt this, we believed that if it were adopted the consuming public would be given better quality products. However, the industry has taken a lot of persuading, though the quality of landings has improved, and this has been reflected in prices.

When I read a speech which was made in another place about the depressed state of the industry, I felt that I had to remind the House that the provisional figures show that the landings of all varieties of sea fish by British vessels in 1969 were worth £66 million, compared with £62·1 million in 1968. This represents a higher first-hand return than in any previous year.

I wish to correct only one figure quoted by the hon. Member for Haltemprice. Taking the general and publicity levies together, he spoke of an increase of 1·95d. It is, in fact, an increase of 0·95d., which means that he more than doubled the amount.

Mr. Wall: Mr. Wall indicated assent.

Mr. Hoy: That therefore removes at least half the hon. Member's complaint.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 113, Noes 18.

Division No. 78.]
AYES
[12.20 a.m.


Alldritt, Walter
Brown, Bob(N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Dunn, James A.


Armstrong, Ernest
Buchan, Norman
Dunnett, Jack


Ashton, Joe (Bassetlaw)
Carmichael, Neil
Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)


Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)
Concannon, J. D.
Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th &amp; C'b'e)


Bidwell, Sydney
Dalyell, Tam
Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)


Binns, John
Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)
Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)


Bishop, E. S.
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Fernyhough, E.


Blackburn, F.
Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)


Boston, Terence
Dobson, Ray
Foley, Maurice


Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)
Doig, Peter
Ford, Ben




Fowler, Gerry
McElhone, Frank
Rees, Merlyn


Galpern, Sir Myer
McGuire, Michael
Richard, Ivor


Garrett, W. E.
Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy


Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Mackie, John
Rodgers, William (Stockton)


Hamling, William
Mackintosh, John P.
Rose, Paul


Harper, Joseph
Maclennan, Robert
Ross, Rt. Hn. William


Harrison, Waiter (Wakefield)
McNamara, J. Kevin
Rowlands, E.


Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith
Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Hazell, Bert
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Silverman, Julius


Heffer, Eric S.
Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfield, E.)
Slater, Joseph


Hilton, W. S.
Marks, Kenneth
Spriggs, Leslie


Hooley, Frank
Marquand, David
Thomas, Rt. Hn. George


Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Thomson, Rt. Hn. George


Howell, Denis (Small Heath)
Millan, Bruce
Tinn, James


Hoy, Rt. Hn. James
Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Urwin, T. W.


Hunter, Adam
Molloy, William
Varley, Eric G.


Hynd, John
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Irvine, Rt. Hn. Sir Arthur
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Watkins, David (Consett)


Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West)
Ogden, Eric
White, Mrs. Eirene


Judd, Frank
O'Halloran, Michael
Whitlock, William


Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &amp; Chatham)
Oswald, Thomas
Williams, Clifford (Abertillery)


Leadbitter, Ted
Palmer, Arthur
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Lestor, Miss Joan
Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)
Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Loughlin, Charles
Pavitt, Laurence
Woof, Robert


McCann, John
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.


MacColl, James
Pentland, Norman
Mr. James Hamilton and


MacDermot, Niall
Perry, George H. (Nottingham, S.)
Mr. Neil McBride.


Macdonald, A. H.
Probert, Arthur





NOES


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Kitson, Timothy
Winstanley, Dr. M. P.


Carlisle, Mark
Monro, Hector
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Clegg, Walter
Osborn, John (Hallam)
Younger, Hn. George


Davidson, James(Aberdeenshire, W.)
Page, Graham (Crosby)



Emery, Peter
Pardoe, John
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch
Mr James Prior and


Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Wells, John (Maidstone)
Mr. Alick Buchanan-Smith.


Kimball, Marcus

Resolved,
That the White Fish Authority Publicity Scheme Confirmatory Order 1970, a draft of which was laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.

Orders of the Day — SUNDAY CINEMATOGRAPH ENTERTAINMENTS

Resolved,
That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, extending Section 1 of the Sunday Entertainments Act 1932 to the Rural District of Edeyrnion, a copy of which order was laid before this House on Thursday, 26th February, be approved.—[Mr. Merlyn Rees.]

Orders of the Day — INCOME AND CORPORATION TAXES BILL [Lords]

Considered in Committee.

[Mr. SYDNEY IRVING in the Chair]

Clauses 1 to 535 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 536

COMMENCEMENT

Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

12.28 a.m.

Mr. Graham Page: I question whether the Clause should stand part of the Bill, and I ask whether it is right to bring the Bill into operation on the dates mentioned in the Clause.
The Clause sets out the dates on which the various parts of the Bill will come into operation. In subsection (1), for the purpose of tax it will apply for the year 1970–71, and for companies' accounting periods it will apply for those ending after 5th April, 1970. For capital gains tax it will apply for the year 1970–71, and then, in various other ways, such as the making of orders, the making of returns, the imposing of penalties, and the conferring of any powers or duties in relation to tax chargeable for more than one period, it comes into force on 6th April, 1970.
That is to say it will come into force next month, in a matter of a few weeks from now, and this will be just about the time when we shall be expecting the presentation to the House of the annual Finance Bill. It will be astonishing if the Finance Bill makes no amendments to tax law which is consolidated in this Bill. Thus, this Bill will be out of date almost immediately it becomes operative. That is unfortunate.
12.30 a.m.
Surely there could not be much difficulty in delaying the operation of this Bill for a time so that it might take account of the amendments which are almost bound to be made in some of its provisions by the Finance Bill. It would not make a great deal of difference if it became operative, for example, on the day after the Finance Bill received the Royal Assent, having embodied within

it the amendments to the tax law introduced by the Finance Bill. This course would mean leaving the Report stage until July, say.
If this Clause is to stand part, I urge the right hon. and learned Gentleman to give a firm assurance concerning the introduction of what we have called "rolling consolidation". By that I mean that the Bill will be kept up to date in future. There are precedents for a statutory requirement that if an Act is amended it shall be reprinted as amended, and I see no reason why we should not adopt some such system in the case of this consolidation of the tax law.
I ask for an assurance of intention—I would prefer a firm undertaking—that if this Clause is to stand part, Amendments to the Measure in future will be made by repealing and re-enacting sections or whole subsections and that there should always be a requirement that the parts of the Measure so affected should be reprinted as amended.
The good work—on Second Reading I called it the magnificent achievement—of this consolidation Bill will be lost quickly if we do not adopt some system of rolling consolidation. The need has never presented itself so forcibly as on this Bill. When the Rent Acts were consolidated, there was a massive Act. We amend the Rent Act quite frequently, but not annually as we amend the tax law. Here, we can be 100 per cent. certain that there will be annual amendments and the consolidation Act will no longer be complete within almost a month or two of its being enacted. Rolling consolidation is adopted by many other legislatures, and it is time we adopted it here and did not waste the valuable time of our consolidation draftsmen by altering their good work almost immediately it has been enacted.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Arthur Irvine): The operative date for the coming into effect of proposals such as those contained in this Bill can almost always give rise to criticism. There are objections to every imaginable date. We have given such consideration as we could to this matter, and I can only tell the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) that we think that what is proposed in the Clause is the best course to adopt.
The hon. Gentleman referred to rolling consolidation. I do not know whether rolling consolidation is the same as running consolidation, a term to which I am more accustomed. I imagine that they mean the same thing. I hope that he will accept from me what he indicated on Second Reading was acceptable to him—that I am rather inclined to be of his mind upon this matter. The prospect is that Finance Bills will increasingly become drafted with a view to assisting and facilitating the process of running or rolling consolidation. I do not think that I can be more explicit in any assurance or undertaking than that. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and the Committee will take it as meant.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 536 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 537 to 540 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedules 1 to 16 agreed to.

Bill reported, without Amendment.

Motion made, and Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 55 (Third Reading), and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, without Amendment.

TAXES MANAGEMENT BILL

[Lords]

Considered in Committee; reported, without Amendment.

Motion made, and Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 55 (Third Reading), and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, without Amendment.

Orders of the Day — SEA FISH INDUSTRY BILL

[Lords]

Considered in Committee.

[Mr. SYDNEY IRVING in the Chair]

Clauses 1 to 60 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 61

REPEALS, SAVINGS ETC.

Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

Mr. Graham Page: This Bill is not only a consolidation Bill but also a statute law revision Bill in some part. Clause 61 deals with the statute law revision matters together with Part II of Schedule 6, which is brought into operation by Clause 61.
The Acts set out in Part II of Schedule 6 as those which are to be repealed relate to the branding of herrings. This does not mean that people catch a herring and brand the individual fish, like catching New Forest ponies and branding them. I understand that people used to brand the barrel in which the herrings were placed. That arose from the fact that a bounty was paid by the Crown to encourage the catching of herrings. It is perhaps a coincidence that we have been discussing tonight help for the fishing industry by advertising to encourage people to buy fish. It might be thought that had we saved branding this would have solved the matter without the Order that has just been debated.
It is significant that the bounty was abolished as long ago as 1838, but branding continued for 101 years after that as a guarantee of the quality of the herrings. Throughout that period there were still Statutes dealing with branding the barrels, as we can see from the list of the Acts, running up as late as the Herring Industry Act, 1935.
Even as late as the Statute Law Revision Act, 1963, which repealed certain Statutes relating to herrings and the branding of herrings, the Acts in Part II of the Schedule were left unrepealed. This raises some doubt whether it is right to repeal them now, only a few years later. In particular, we are left in doubt


because in very recent and very substantial Statute Law repeal legislation I had hoped that the principle had been established that the House would have the benefit of an assurance that all parties concerned with obsolete Statutes which it was sought to repeal had been consulted.
I raised this point briefly on the Second Reading of this Bill, and the Solicitor-General said that the Joint Committee on Consolidation must have been satisfied that proper consultation had taken place before Part II of Schedule 6 was prepared. But in the report of the Committee we find that the very point was raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival), who asked specifically whether any consultation had taken place before this Part was introduced as statute law revision. He received no direct answer, but one gathered from that that no consultation had taken place. It is a great pity if that is the case, because the House should be able to judge the value of obsolete Statutes, which perhaps sound as if they are of no further use, by being assured that those who are really concerned with them—in this case, those in the herring industry—have been consulted before the draftsman, no doubt in all good will, inserts them in a repeal Clause.
But it seems to me that in this case there has not been the consultation that we were given some assure would take place when we had a statute law repeal Bill before the House. It is regrettable if no consultation took place in this case, for how are we to know, without great research by individual hon. Members, about the need to repeal Statutes relating to herring branding at this stage when it was not necessary to repeal them only a few years ago?

12.45 a.m.

The Solicitor-General: I take note of what the hon. Gentleman the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) has to say on this point, as I did when he touched upon this in the Second Reading debate.
I think that the hon. Gentleman's contribution is a useful one. I do not think I have anything to add about the bearing of the matter upon the Bill, because the fact that the point of the practical utility of the enactment was raised in the Joint

Committee at least shows that the matter was not ignored altogether.
On the other hand, at the moment I am bound to say that I am ready to give general consideration in principle to how far it may prove to be desirable in future to have regard to the representations of outside bodies on the issue of the practical utility of perhaps an ancient enactment. That sounds a desirable purpose to my mind. I would expect to find that the matter is rather carefully investigated, but unless we take up this point in a practical fashion it may prove to be a very esoteric process, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 61 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 62 agreed to.

Schedules 1 to 6 agreed to.

Bill reported, without Amendment.

Motion made, and Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 55 (Third Reading), and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, without Amendment.

MAJOR A. F. BLUNDELL

Motion made, and Question proposed. That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. James Hamilton.]

12.48 a.m.

Mr. Michael Hamilton: Eighteen months ago I raised the case of Major Alan F. Blundell. The facts are on record on 18th and 25th July, 1968. I raise the case tonight to bring the record up to date.
Time does not allow a rehearsal of the full story. I have only a few minutes. It is necessary only to retrace a few steps.
In essence, Major Blundell made two mistakes in his Army career, the first from grounds of patriotism and the second from his own innate ability. The first was to be captured on active service in Korea in 1951 alongside his colleagues in the Gloucesters; the second was to succeed in 1968 in a competitive examination in securing an established post in the Diplomatic Service.
Following his success, it was arranged that he should leave the Army at midnight on the last day of the month and step straight into his new career. Then, at the last minute, it was realised that he must be rebarred from the Diplomatic Service under the rules of the Radcliffe Committee because of that incident 17 years previously when he had been held captive by the Communists. This was crushing blow. He was married with four young children, and a new career had lain clearly in front of him for many months. When the Foreign Office door slammed he was within weeks of leaving the Army. Those many months could have been put to good use in making alternative plans.
As it was, the future held nothing. He therefore sought a brief extension of his Army service. That was when he came to see me in Salisbury. A month or two could make all the difference. Needless to say, his commanding officer supported his application, and, needless to say, his brigade commander did likewise. There was a special job for which he was needed in the Army and on extension could safely be assumed. A senior Minister of the Crown is on record is assuming that extension had been granted.
Now the second blow fell. It was at this point that the Secretary of State for Defence intervened and did two very remarkable things. First, he refused even a week's extension. Second, hardly had this officer's distinguished Army career ended when the Secretary of State ordered the bailiffs into his Army quarter and issued a summons for possession. Major Blundell attended at Andover court, alongside motoring offenders and petty criminals.
At first I was deeply puzzled. This officer had given his whole life to the Army. I anticipated that the Secretary of State would make every effort to help in this officer's personal crisis, including representations to the Foreign Office. Why such haste to see him off the premises? Why such haste, contrary to all our practices in this House, at moment when his Member of Parliament was in touch with the Minister, to drop this officer like a hot potato?
Then the explanation became clear. The Foreign Office, being the senior of

the two Departments of State, had followed the Radcliffe Committee recommendations correctly. Harshly, but necessarily because security regulations are of such supreme national importance, it declined to admit this officer to security work. In so doing it exposed the flank of the Secretary of State. The Radcliffe Committee reported in 1962:
… we recommend that the three Services should make sure that their arrangements on this matter are in line with Civil Service practice
Yet in 1962 and subsequently Major Blundell held positively vetted security posts in the Army. This explained the indecent haste to be rid of this gifted officer. Overnight he became a potential embarrassment. Loyal service to the Crown through the years now counted for nothing. The Minister did not want to know him. Orders went out, as had happened once before:
… set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle.
Not a week's extension, put in the bailiffs, never mind the four young children in the house, never mind that a field officer had never been taken to court before for possession of his Army quarter. He must be taken off Army strength so that the Secretary of State could no longer be responsible and answerable for him. Thus disowned and without a job, and drawing unemployment benefit for the first time in his life, the penalty of his own success, this officer and his family sailed from this country to make a fresh start in Australia.
Now to the sequel. I am sorry that there has to be a sequel. The Department knows that, given some small gesture to my constituent, I would have been prepared to drop the whole matter and put the file away.
I wrote to the Secretary of State for Defence, and asked if he would invite Lord Radcliffe and his four distinguished colleagues to reconvene for a day. They are all active men and mostly in London. Lord Radcliffe is currently conducting an inquiry at Warwick University, of which he is Chancellor. I was anxious to know whether, with the passage of time, the committee still adhered to its ruling made at the time of the Blake case, debarring a man, once held by Communists, for the rest of his life from security posts.
I hoped that impeccable service over 10 or 20 years and the testimony of colleagues who had shared imprisonment that there had been no brainwashing might now permit an element of discretion to be used. I hoped that the committee, whose report constitutes the security bible of all Governments, might yet be able to help Major Blundell. Granted some easement of the regulations, the Foreign Office might yet be able to accept him.
The Secretary of State, in replying, did not say "yes" and did not say "no". He stalled. There was a delay of over 18 months. I wrote no fewer than six letters pressing for a decision.
The Minister was in a dilemma. Not to submit the case to the committee would merely confirm that there was something to hide. To submit it would be to invite severe criticism of security procedures in the fighting Services. It took 18 months to answer my letter. Finally, to resolve his dilemma, the Secretary of State attempted a compromise. Yes, the Secretary of State has agreed—
that the rules for the employment of ex-prisoners of the Communists should now be interpreted more flexibly, and that the individual merits of each case should be taken into account.
Is not it tragic that this could not have applied 18 months ago when this officer's career hung in the balance? In addition the Secretary of State has informed Lord Radcliffe of his thinking—
This included consultations with Lord Radcliffe who has ben told the result of our deliberations.
What I asked for in my original letter of 2nd August, 1968, was that the committee should reconvene and make recommendations. The Secretary of State has not invited it to reconvene. That would be too dangerous; it would be too hazardous to invite its views. He would tell the chairman—yes, inform him—but to ask the committee for its considered joint recommendation, perhaps for the world to read, not on your life!
Thus, after 18 months the Minister has come to his conclusion. For Major Blundell he intends to do nothing; not a gesture; not a free air passage to come and see his mother in England; not a month's salary when this officer should properly have been retained by the

Army; not a letter to assure him that, despite his treatment, the Government are grateful for the services which he has rendered his country; no, not even the cost of this officer's travel to Andover court. These, then, are to be the rewards of patriotism.
The Secretary of State, in his recent letter to me, makes two points. I accept neither. First, he draws a distinction in security procedures between the fighting Services and the Diplomatic Service. I, too, have read the Radcliffe Report. Lord Radcliffe is a man who never uses two words if one will do—
That Service Departments are, of course, within this category"—
says paragraph 12.
We recommend that the three Services should make sure that their arrangements on this matter are in line with Civil Service practice.
The Secretary of State's explanation does not bear examination.
The second point is that in his letter the Secretary of State states:
Had Major Blundell remained in the army this officer would at the time of the regular review of his positive vetting in September, 1969, have been removed from that category anyway.
Perhaps the suggestion is that it was only a matter of time before irregularities ironed themselves out, only a matter of time before the Secretary of State was made an honest man.
What reason was given for this remarkable statement? Had some character defect developed? Was there insobriety or financial instability? Why was it that the investigating officers were already so confident of the action which they would take a year and a half later? Was it because this officer had called on his Member of Parliament to enlist support for a brief extension of his Army service? What is the reason?
The Secretary of State explains:
His earlier promise was not fulfilled.
When I read that I gasped. I asked myself, "How low can a troubled Minister of the Crown stoop?" Here was a Regular Army officer still in his 30s, blessed with an ideally happy marriage, able enough to secure one of the three posts open to Her Majesty's Forces in the Executive grade of the Diplomatic Service, a man in the prime of life, who had proved his courage in battle and his


devotion to duty in time of peace, a man confidently entrusted year by year with access to the most highly classified information.
At the very moment that Major Blundell succeeded in his interview, in his written examination, and in the intelligence test, which is a test of mental ability, for the very highest ranks of the Civil Service, the Secretary of State writes:
His earlier promise was not fulfilled.
The Secretary of State for Defence, I regret to say, chose to save his own skin rather than stretch out a hand to save the career of a senior serving officer for whose well being he was entirely responsible.
I do not forget that it was another officer, also a major, who was wronged by his Minister of Defence, and that in his case it took 12 years before he was reinstated. That officer died in 1935, and his name was Alfred Dreyfus. It it not my intention that Alan Blundell should wait twelve years.

1.3 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army (Mr. Ivor Richard): Perhaps I might begin by bringing the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Michael Hamilton) and the House slightly down to earth. I listened to his speech with a great deal of interest since it would seem to me difficult to construct a diatribe more contrary to the facts, as the hon. Member must have known at the time he constructed the speech which he has just delivered.
What the hon. Member has just said about the conduct of the Secretary of State for Defence, and, indeed, of the Government, is utterly disgraceful. When the facts are known I trust that he will at least have the grace to withdraw some of the more astonishing statements that he has made about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.
I will deal with three of them. First, is the hon. Member seriously suggesting that the Secretary of State deliberately caused a county court summons to be issued against Major Blundell? He knows, since he has been the recipient of the apology, that on no fewer than three occasions—once personally by my

right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence for Administration, once through the mouth of another Minister, albeit a Foreign Office Minister in an Adjournment debate, and once at least in correspondence—apologies have been expressed to Major Blundell, through the hon. Gentleman, for that error.
Second, is the hon. Member seriously suggesting that the fact that Major Blundell should not have been permitted even an extra week's extension of his time in the Army, was a decision taken on the express instructions of the Secretary of State for Defence because of some sinister reason that the hon. Gentleman ascribes to a desire on the part of the Secretary of State for Defence to cover up an error in the security procedures in his own Department? It was an error which, on the hon. Gentleman's own admission, must have been made not by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State but by one of his predecessors under a Conservative Administration in 1962 or 1963. If the hon. Gentleman suggests that my right hon. Friend in this whole affair was trying to cover up for the errors of a previous Conservative Minister of Defence, I was not aware that my right hon. Friend had such a tender regard for some of his predecessors.

Mr. Michael Hamilton: I have introduced no hint of any party point. In any event, there is such a thing as Ministerial responsibility.

Mr. Richard: Having heard the hon. Gentleman's speech, I will not take any lectures on Ministerial responsibility or Ministerial conduct from him.
The case of Major Blundell illustrates some of the difficulties that the security services of any Government face. They were faced originally by the Government which the hon. Gentleman supported, since I believe that he was a Member of this House at the time.
As, apparently, the hon. Gentleman is calling for the reconvening of the Radcliffe Committee, it might not be a bad idea to begin our examination of the case by looking at the committee's terms of reference, and then go on to consider what the committee said.
The terms of reference were:
In the light of recent convictions for offences under the Official Secrets Acts, to review the security procedures and practices


currently followed in the public service and to consider what, if any, changes are required.
On this aspect of the matter, para. 77 of the committee's report is the most important one. The commitee said:
There is one type of case where particular care is needed before Positive Vetting clearance can be granted or maintained. This is the case where a public servant returns to his service after being held captive or interned for any substantial period (by which we have in mind a period of say three months) in Communist hands. From evidence which we have heard and from our examination of the recent case of Blake we think that there must be a risk involved in employing anyone who has been through such an experience on secret work. While we recognise that circumstances may arise in which it will be thought right to take a calculated risk, we recommend that the general rule should be adopted that no one in the category we have described should be re-employed (or employed for the first time) in any post within the field of Positive Vetting.
The Radcliffe Committee reported in April, 1962, which was some time before my right hon. Friend assumed the office which he now holds. Its recommendation was clear and specific. It was that anyone who had been a prisoner in Communist hands for a substantial period—namely, three months or more—should not be employed or re-employed in any post within the field of positive vetting. The only exception that the committee made was:
While we recognise that circumstances may arise in which it will be though right to take a calculated risk…".
That is the exception as it appeared in the original report.
Turning from that background to the specific case of Major Blundell, there are two or three specific points which should be made. The first is that there was never any question from the Army's point of view of Major Blundell's positive vetting being withdrawn while he was a serving officer. During the whole time that he served as an officer, he served gallantly and well. There was never any question of a withdrawal by the Army of the positive vetting clearance that he had while a serving officer.
Second, I remind the hon. Gentleman, since apparently he forgot it in the course of his speech, that Major Blundell chose to leave the Army of his own volition. It was not a case in which the Army decided that he was either redundant or should go for some other reason. It was a case

in which Major Blundell, when there was no question of his vetting being withdrawn, at that stage voluntarily decided to apply for retirement under the redundancy scheme. Whether at that moment Major Blundell anticipated getting employment with the Foreign Office is not for me to say. Nor is it for the Army to say. For what he thought to be his own good reasons—not, as far as I am aware, relying on any statement made to him by any person in authority in the Army or in the Ministry of Defence—he chose voluntarily to apply for retirement, and he retired on the generous redundancy terms then given to him.

Mr. Hamilton: Mr. Hamilton indicated assent.

Mr. Richard: I am glad to see the hon. Gentleman agreeing with me at least to this extent. This is not a case in which somebody has been retired against his will because his security clearance has been withdrawn, or anything like that.
The next stage is that Major Blundell chose—again, I suppose, for what he thought were good reasons—to attempt to obtain a post in the Diplomatic Service. Unfortunately, after he had gone through a large part of the procedure necessary to obtain that post, it was discovered that he could not take up that appointment because of his security position. Again, I trust that the hon. Gentleman will accept—because he knows it and it is time that he accepted it openly and withdrew some of his strictures against the Secretary of State for Defence—that whatever happened in relation to Major Blundell and the Foreign Office, or, indeed, the Civil Service Department, was no part of the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Defence.
The next stage was that when Major Blundell was told by the Foreign Office at the last moment that his security clearance had been withdrawn, this was grossly inconvenient for him. I accept that. However, I point out that his allegation that that is attributable to the actions of my right hon. Friend is not only a travesty of the facts but would require unparliamentary language for me to describe it more accurately.

Mr. Hamilton: Mr. Hamilton rose—

Mr. Richard: I will not give way. The hon. Gentleman has had his say, and I


believe that, on reflection, he may regret much of what he said.
It is true that no extension was granted to Major Blundell. By the time an application for extension was made, one was up against the time limit that had been given and agreed by the Army for his leaving. It was not then possible nor, indeed, would it have been right—because a lot of officers were leaving the Army about the same time and some of them might have found it inconvenient to stick to the date upon which they were originally going out—for an extension to be granted to Major Blundell.
Concerning the action in going to the county court, about which the hon. Gentleman made so much, all that I can say, as I have said before and as the Ministry has said before, is that that was an administrative error for which we have expressed our apology to Major Blundell for any inconvenience that it may have caused him. But I point out that, although it may have caused him a certain amount of inconvenience and a certain loss of dignity in going to the local county court, it did not cause him any financial loss. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will have the grace to make that part clear.
It was at that stage that the hon. Gentleman came into the picture. He, indeed, has been running this case now for 18 months to two years. It is a matter for him how long he proposes to go on with this conduct. But he added little tonight to what he said in July, 1968, in another Adjournment debate.
The general effect within the last two years on the original Radcliffe recommendation is that the policy is now being applied more flexibly. This is not due to the case of Major Blundell nor to the efforts of the hon. Member for Salisbury. Indeed, the discussions on the effect of the proposals in paragraph 77 of the Radcliffe Report were going on long before the hon. Member first chose to ventilate the case of his unfortunate constituent. But the original policy was applied with limited flexibility in allowing exceptions, and the Government's recent decision has widened this flexibility. Individual cases will now be considered on their merits, taking into account the interests of the Service in their widest sense.
The hon. Member made much of the letter which the Secretary of State wrote to him on 3rd February, and particularly of the remark which my right hon. Friend made about the earlier promise not having been fulfilled. I am a little staggered that the hon. Member did not read the whole of that paragraph, particularly the sentence before the one of which he complains, and read it against that background of paragraph 77 of the Radcliffe Report. My right hon. Friend wrote:
There is a straightforward explanation for the apparent difference between the interpretation which the Ministry of Defence placed upon Major Blundell's history and that placed upon it by the Diplomatic Service. His original positive vetting was approved by my Department because he came within the relatively narrow category"—
I emphasise those last three words—
of those whose potential was thought on the basis of earlier evidence, sufficient to justify exceptional consideration.
"Exceptional consideration" in that sentence read against the background of the rule in paragraph 77 means that it was thought right to take what Lord Radcliffe called a "calculated risk" in the case of Major Blundell, having regard to what was then thought to be his potential.
My right hon. Friend went on to say to the hon. Member:
Moreover, his career prospects in the Army could have been prejudiced by the sole action of denying PV clearance. However, his earlier promise was not fulfilled and there would consequently have been no exceptional grounds for continuing his PV clearance when it became due for review in September, 1969.
I do not see why the hon. Gentleman complains so much about that sentence. All it is saying, read against the background of paragraph 77, is that at one stage it was thought that this gentleman was of sufficient potential to justify a calculated risk being taken but that that promise, regrettably, was not fulfilled in the course of his Army career. I trust that the hon. Gentleman will not contend that the fact that Major Blundell did not do as well as we perhaps originally thought he would is also attributable to my right hon. Friend. Because his earlier promise was not fulfilled it would not have been thought right to take a calculated risk on his positive vetting when it came up for review in September, 1969.
That is the whole of this unhappy history. It is most unfortunate that in this case, in which I have read all the papers, and in which the hon. Member has been treated by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence and by the Minister of Defence for Administration and by the Minister of State. Foreign Office—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Tuesday evening; and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at eighteen minutes past One o'clock.